It turns out even the big Canadian video gaming companies in a growing business are feeling the crunch of economic downturn.

Remi Racine, president and CEO of Behaviour Interactive, Canada’s largest indie game developer, calls it “the big freeze,” the fall-out from the 2008-2009 market meltdown.

“Sales for the first time in the industry started to decline, especially at the retail level,” Racine recalled while delivering a keynote address Thursday morning at the GameOn: Finance 2011 conference in Toronto.

Game development budgets collapsed, the European market experienced a flurry of piracy, and the Wii platform didn’t pan out as expected.

So Racine had to reboot his Montreal-based game production business.

“We have to have fresh ideas. The future is connected. There’s more opportunity than ever, and it’s more challenging than ever,” he insisted.

One of Racine’s first moves was to rebrand the company with a new name: A2M became Behaviour, as the games producer returned to its 1990s roots as Behaviour, and a digital extension of then Malofilm Entertainment in Montreal.

A new-look Behaviour also has become more business-to-consumer, connecting with its fans, rather than more connected to game publishers in a B2B world.

“Behaviour is more memorable and does more to attract the consumer,” Racine said.

As well, Behaviour has expanded to five studios to embrace gaming across multiple and emerging platforms.

The producer has one studio for console games, another for family-based gaming, another for portable games, played on the iPad and iPhone, or anything that’s mobile.

There’s a fourth studio Santiago, Chile focused on digital games, and a fifth studio in Montreal for online games.

That means Behaviour is making gaming content for traditional and hand-held consoles, digital downloads, mobile, browser-based and social networks.

Racine said Behaviour has just released its first Facebook game, and more are to come in 2011.

“We have a balanced portfolio. More and more we’ll do original titles. And we’re not going to go after EA and Ubisoft. We will build small and beautiful games for connected devices,” he told conference delegates.

The GameOn: Finance 2011 conference continues to Friday.

Pictured: Naughty Bear from Behaviour is an all-action, sandbox game for Xbox 360 and PS3.