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NIK WEST think of games like World of Warcraft or Skyrim or Witcher, the ideas on which they're based originated in D&D. This is full circle for you, returning to a game from your childhood. That was denitely a big part of our ability to have Wizards feel comfortable. They felt that we really got this brand. Also, the kind of genre of game we're making, idle clickers, our Crusaders of the Lost Idols has done really well. So we could talk about that game and how we felt it was a good t with D&D. Are video games bad for kids? I think we're at a point where there are two narratives around video games in our society. One, they are bad for you or at best neutral, and that's the dominant narrative that gets replayed by media. And then there is another narrative arising from research, and that is that not only are these games not neutral, they're positive, and you actually learn a huge amount. So let's take that stereotype of the reclusive boy in his parents' basement playing video games. Odds are that he's playing a social game, and he has quite a network of people he's playing with. Let's say he's playing World of Warcraft, and he is doing that with a raiding guild [a group of players focused on completing a raid], and they have roles, and he's learning leadership and working with groups of people. FUN FACT Jordan started dancing ballet at age eight. By the time he was 16, he was training three hours every day E ric Jordan expected to be debt-ridden and unem- ployable when he gradu- ated from UVic with a ne arts degree, specializing in painting, in 1993. Instead, he co-founded an enterprise software com- pany, PureEdge Solutions Inc., which sold to IBM Corp. 12 years later. Jordan joined founders David Whittaker and Justin Stocks as a partner in Victoria- based Codename Entertainment Inc. in 2012. This summer the 18-employee video game studio announced a licensing agree- ment with Seattle-based Wizards of the Coast LLC to produce its own title under the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Jordan has shared his passion for the video game industry as a board member and chair of VIATEC (Victoria Innovation, Advanced Technolo—y and Entrepreneurship Council) and as a director of DigiBC. As presi- dent of the Premier's Technol- o—y Council in 2010, he helped author a report outlining a vision for Kš12 education that informed the Ministry of Education's rede- signed curriculum. What does this deal with Wizards of the Coast mean to your company? It's fantastic because the reach of Wizards is so much broader than Codename has, so the ability to work with them and ride their coattails somewhat in terms of distribution, reach and aware- ness around the brand is really great. Dungeons & Dragons is such an iconic brand. It was the rst role-playing game, so if you Eric Jordan The CEO of Victoria's Codename Entertainment shares his thoughts on why video games are good for children–and for B.C.'s economy by Marcie Good THE CONVERSATION What was PureEdge Solutions, the company you sold to IBM before joining Codename Entertainment? At the beginning we weren't quite sure what we were. My partner [David Manning] and I started it as a university research project. But what we grew into was an enterprise software com- pany selling highly specialized electronic form software, which would manage very complex transactions that required lots of security. SEPTEMBER 2017 BCBUSINESS 21 VIDEO GAME NATION 52% Proportion of Canadians who say they played a video game in the past four weeks 49% Proportion of gamers who are female 36 Average age of a Canadian gamer 11 hours Average time gamers spend playing each week SOURCE: ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

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