Home

How Digital Creative Industries Are Redrawing Their Own Borders

Google Code for Remarketing Tag - Bloom

Film, television, games, XR, and live entertainment once operated as separate trades. Shared tools, shared audiences, and mobile talent are dissolving those borders, and the careers of the next decade will be built across them.
Pavel Kotov | 22 Oct 2026

Take ABBA Voyage. The band spent five weeks in motion-capture suits, the London team at Industrial Light & Magic created the visual effects, and the show plays in a purpose-built arena [1]. Is that a concert, a film, or a game? Some industry leaders still defend deep specialization as the guarantee of quality; others see the walls between segments as the main obstacle to growth. Which view will shape the next generation of digital creative industry managers?

Start with scale, but with the right yardstick. Canada's entire cultural sector added about $67 billion to GDP in 2024 [2]; the part that matters here is narrower and export-driven. Quebec's video game industry employs 15,220 developers across 257 studios, nearly 45% of the national workforce [3], and in Quebec, VFX and animation jobs demonstrated a compound annual growth rate of 28% between 2009 and 2019 [4]. On screen, foreign location and service work made up 60% of combined foreign and Canadian-content production in 2024-25, up from 47% in 2015-16 [5]; in Quebec, it was 56% of $2.98 billion in audiovisual production [6]. These figures measure size, not convergence, but they describe an industry that sells to the world and hires from it, which is where borders between segments stop being useful.

Nobody is arguing against craft. A lighting designer, a technical artist, and a line producer each master something the others cannot replace. The trouble starts when that mastery ends at the edge of one segment's vocabulary.

When technology travels, skills travel with it. Cross-pollination already shows up in at least seven forms:

  • Motion capture: Used across film and games, it now drives concerts.
  • Film VFX on giant screens: Cinema-grade effects now fill live venues.
  • Game engines on set: Real-time rendering is replacing green screens.
  • Games as venues: Virtual stages host concerts for audiences larger than any stadium.
  • Location-based storytelling: Content studios now design attractions, not just visuals.
  • Heritage as canvas: Cathedrals and forests become sets for projected narratives.
  • Hybrid performance: Performers share the stage with avatars, light, and code.

Moment Factory shows what this looks like inside one company. It grew out of Montreal's rave and VJ scene, where its founders used video projection to make parties more spectacular [8]. It has since delivered more than 550 productions, over 80% of its projects are now outside Canada [7], and it employs more than 450 people across upwards of 70 disciplines [8]. A decade ago, it launched MF School so that staff could, in co-founder Dominic Audet's words, "stay within the company but have different careers" [8]. Its Originals division, which co-produces ticketed attractions, has sold over 7 million tickets [7], and the Lumina night walks have reached more than 35 installations [8]. Less a supplier of visual content, more a producer of experiences, built by hiring and training across segments.

Yet integration is not automatic. In 25 interviews about virtual production in the UK, the StoryFutures Academy found friction when film productions recruit from games, including different terminology and working norms [9]. Canada's game industry is also consolidating: studios fell from 937 in 2021 to 821 in 2024, and although about three-quarters are Canadian-owned, foreign-owned firms provide 88% of employment [3]. Large employers can easily become bubbles, with strong internal pipelines and few reasons to look at a neighbouring field.

Audiences, meanwhile, ignore the borders. ABBA Voyage reportedly cost about £141 million (roughly $250 million) [1]. Epic Games counted 27.7 million unique players and 45.8 million visits across Travis Scott's five Fortnite showings in 2020 [1]. The Las Vegas Sphere, the world's largest high-resolution LED screen, runs on 64,000 tiles from Montreal's SACO Technologies and carried visuals from ILM and The Mill [10]. None of it fits inside one segment's org chart.

The talent market already feels it. StoryFutures interviewees reported that demand for virtual production talent far outstrips supply, with roles such as real-time supervisor sitting between games, VFX, and film [9]. Quebec adds its own twist: 96% of video game revenue came from exports in 2019 [4], so local talent works to the rhythm of global technology, not local categories.

For the people running these companies, that changes the job. A producer who once managed a single pipeline may now coordinate a game-engine team, a VFX house, and a venue operator in the same week, none of whom share a vocabulary. Craft still matters; it simply travels better when someone can translate it.

This is also why training for the sector has started to look different. The McGill School of Continuing Studies, for instance, built its Professional Development Certificate in Digital Creative Industries Management around film and television, games, and XR at once, since questions of business models, talent, and scaling repeat across segments even when the tools do not. Learners from different specializations share a class, much as they meet on the job, which is how the industry already works.

References

  1. NBC Boston. (2023). ABBA's successful avatar show in London offers a glimpse at a daring new direction for live music. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/business/money-report/abbas-successful-avatar-show-in-london-offers-a-glimpse-at-a-daring-new-direction-for-live-music/2931427/
  2. Statistics Canada. (2026). Provincial and territorial cultural indicators, 2024 [The Daily, June 2, 2026]. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260602/dq260602a-eng.pdf
  3. Entertainment Software Association of Canada. (2025). Canada's video game industry economic impact report, 2024 (as reported by MobileSyrup). https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/01/28/canadian-video-game-industry-2024-economic-impact-report/
  4. KPMG & Montréal International. (2020). Montréal, plaque tournante du secteur de la créativité numérique: faits saillants. https://www.montrealinternational.com/app/uploads/2020/11/etude-kpmg-creativite-numerique_2020_faits-saillants.pdf
  5. Canadian Media Producers Association. (2026). Profile 2025: An economic report on the screen-based media production industry in Canada. https://cmpa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Profile_2025_Summary_ENG_FINAL.pdf
  6. Institut de la statistique du Québec. (2025). Survol de l'industrie audiovisuelle au Québec en 2024-2025. https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/communique/after-decline-the-audiovisual-industry-was-up-quebec-2024-2025
  7. Blanco Coates, C. (2024, October 21). Moment Factory: expanding horizons with an ambitious growth plan. Blooloop. https://blooloop.com/immersive/in-depth/moment-factory-growth-plan/
  8. Blanco Coates, C. (2026, September 22). Moment Factory at 25: why immersive experiences are about more than technology. Blooloop. https://blooloop.com/moment-factory-25-years/
  9. Bennett, J., Heath, C., Kilkelly, F., & Richardson, P. (2021). Virtual production: A global innovation opportunity for the UK (interim report). StoryFutures Academy. https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/files/50420748/VP_Skills_Report_202121.pdf
  10. VFX Voice. (2024, April). Las Vegas Sphere: world's largest high-res LED screen for live action and VFX. https://vfxvoice.com/las-vegas-sphere-worlds-largest-high-res-led-screen-for-live-action-and-vfx/

 

Note: The image in this article was created using generative AI software.

Back to top