Albert Lai says Canada no longer needs to be “somebody else’s bitch” when it comes to gaming.

The serial entrepreneur and founder of six startups, including London, ON-based Big Viking Games, a Facebook and mobile social games development studio, said during his keynote address at the GameON: Finance conference Tuesday that this is the most interesting and lucrative time to be in the game business in Canada.

“Canada has been a sweatshop for other multinationals – a hub for work-for-hire – and the opportunity is now for us to take a leadership role,” he said.

With the country’s talent pool, government support and market potential, Canada has all the pieces in place to dominate what he projects to be a multi-billion dollar gaming industry.

Lai said Canadian developers can capitalize on the fast-changing media landscape, evolving technology (like HTML5 and app stores), distribution and demographics as areas where startups have more access and opportunity than ever before.

“The seed funds available today are incredible compared to what we had a mere four years ago. There is incredible access to incubators as well. Also, you don’t need as much [money], because you can develop titles so quickly and cheaply now,” he said.

The traditional publisher model is seeing a demise, he said, adding that self-publishing is now a viable option that provides direct access to traffic, which developers can then funnel to their next ventures.

“Brands, while important, are a lot less important. You also don’t need to be partnered with a channel partner and distributor as much, because you can engineer your own distribution.”

Lai also said that the concept of “free to play”, or the idea of virtual goods (like Facebook credits) being the predominant way to monetize a game, is a growing and successful trend, whereby developers can win traffic by offering virtual rewards, like game credits.

Mining user demographics, the way users share content, and the content that is being shared, is also key.

“We have the rise of social and data-driven distribution. The smart developers, the most successful developers, have one thing in common, which is that they are all data-driven. They are all masters of data and analytics, and quantifying and testing their audience,” he said.

Lai summed up the “state of the battle” by saying that startups, entrepreneurs and developers need to ask questions and forge ahead in key growth areas:

• Social games: What are the opportunities for social games internationally? Who should the Canadian industry partner with to get access to international markets?

• Mobile and social as the new hope for growth and location as a new variable: How are we going to use location as part of game design that will make money?
  

• Mobile fragmentation: Android apps and OS versions aren’t uniform across various Android smartphone and tablet devices, which has presented problems in managing the user experience (not to mention adding vendor customization to the mix) – is this an opportunity for a smaller player or upstart, to either specialize or address fragmentation on a broad scale?

• Gamification: A peripheral market that is on the fringes of game development – is there a role for [the gaming industry] in the gamification of other sectors? Can we bring our game knowledge to other verticals?

• Music and games: Will games become the next content discovery platform for music?

Lai is also the co-founder of BubbleShare (which was sold to Kaboose in 2007) and Kontagent. Greg Thomson is co-founder of Big Viking Games, based in London, ON.