Moving to another country

Very nice post furyo, I think the subject you touched upon about "where the money is is where the industry is" was very interesting. And about how adaptable our industry is (because the workers in it love working on games so much), so that almost an entire community of workers can move to one place is really weird.

Furyo

Also, on the subject of Boston, New England has been a second home. I used to live in Connecticut for a year when I was 17, and since then I have been lucky enough to visit or live in 37 of the 50 USA. That's a lot more than most Americans. So the US is a second home to me, or at the very least is a lot closer to being home than places that are right around France. I feel closer to home, and fit in a lot more, in Boston than I would in Stockholm, or even Frankfurt. A huge reason for that is mastering the language of the people around you. And yeah, one aspect of settling down I have now accepted is that I no longer want to live in a place where I don't speak the native language fluently. Thankfully, that leaves a few still

Sometimes, the sheer distance between countries is nothing like the distance to home.

Furyo basically summed up my take on it as well... I haven't moved out of the country yet, but I intend to do so ASAP and I'll really go where the work takes me... as for "home" I guess since leaving my parents house I haven't really got one yet.... I hope to find it eventually, but until then...

The language barrier is probably really the biggest hurdle and one of the reasons it's always a good idea to learn new languages as fast as possible. Especially when we're coming back to the original question about Canada - Quebec (Montreal) at least requires basic knowledge of french.

Montreal really doesn't. That's the biggest assumption I see people make about Montreal. Montreal is historically a very english oriented city, where the English speaking Canadians held all positions of economic and political power until 1976 when Quebec voted a law to make French a lot more important and protected. Since then, the city really is a 50/50 deal, with large parts of the city where one would never think of speaking French at first, or English at first in other parts. It's the only truly bilingual city I know, far beyond Brussels for instance.

I know a few dozen english speaking Canadians and Americans (and others like Klein) whose French basically revolves around Hello how do you do, and they live in this city with no problems. And I don't mean "just get by", they properly made this town their home.

Anywhere else in Quebec? yes absolutely, French is mandatory.

thanks for the post furyo. it wasn't my intention to make it sound like you were a nutjob, but i had trouble finding the right words for asking the right question.

Thanks furyo :]]]

And yeah the videogame industry state in france is that bad. Maybe it was just my experiences that wasn't that good, but it's in such bad shape that i find french developers to have a very pessimistic attitude towards their job. Many people want to stay in France for a lot of reasons, but unfortunately there isn't much money and in consequence not a lot of job offers.

So out of fear and ambition rise a lot of political bullshit that isn't very pleasant to work in. Can't say if the grass is greener elsewhere, as i didn't moved so far, but i really plan to !!! Maybe it's greener where there's money

Political games happen in all companies, but the way to look at it is "It's a lot easier to deal with it when you work on kick ass games and make 3 to 4 times as much as you would in France" And yeah, in practical terms, you do get to work on much better games, and the pay is an order of magnitude better too. Regardless of where you go, for instance, I was making twice as much at Crytek as the best offer in France I ever got. And the cost of living is about half that of France as well... It all adds up.

Quote from KoKo5oVaR

Thanks furyo :]]]And yeah the videogame industry state in france is that bad. Maybe it was just my experiences that wasn't that good, but it's in such bad shape that i find french developers to have a very pessimistic attitude towards their job. Many people want to stay in France for a lot of reasons, but unfortunately there isn't much money and in consequence not a lot of job offers.

So out of fear and ambition rise a lot of political bullshit that isn't very pleasant to work in. Can't say if the grass is greener elsewhere, as i didn't moved so far, but i really plan to !!! Maybe it's greener where there's money

Lets go work at crytek or dice richard

Quote from Furyo

Montreal really doesn't. That's the biggest assumption I see people make about Montreal.

I was more talking about the visa application which - at least the last time I checked required "basic knowledge of french". I have no clue how much emphasis is on it once you are really going through the application though good to hear montreal is english friendly

Quote from e-freak

I was more talking about the visa application which - at least the last time I checked required "basic knowledge of french". I have no clue how much emphasis is on it once you are really going through the application though good to hear montreal is english friendly

I think you only need that for citizenship. I remember Kleinluka told me that he had to learn french to get his citizenship!