The Best Cities for Canadian Gamers
According to research done by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, there are 23 million gamers in the country. That’s over 60% of the population!
With so many Canadians glued to their screens, or at the very least doing a digital puzzle a day, the entertainment experts at BonusFinder Canada wanted to find out which of Canada’s cities is the best place for them to live. To do this, we looked at several categories, such as:
? The size of the city
? Average broadband speeds
? Gaming and board game conventions
? Game developers
? Game and entertainment centres
? Gaming jobs
These criteria were used to rank each city, creating the ultimate top 10 best cities for Canadian gamers.
Top 10 Best Cities for Canadian Gamers
1. Toronto
Known as one of the most diverse cities in the world, Toronto is a melting pot of cultures. And what could be better to bond over than a cross-cultural love of video games?
While it may not be Canada’s capital, Toronto is Canada’s largest and best-known city. It comes as no surprise, then, that Toronto scored highly across numerous categories. The city scored highest for gaming conventions, of which it has four. It also scored highly for games and entertainment centres with 74, and gaming development studios with 43. With an overall score of 9.27 out of 10, Toronto leads the pack by a fair margin and ranks in first place.
2. Montreal
Montreal is Canada’s second-largest city and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Home to three separate universities, Quebec is a big student city. With such a youthful population, it is understandably a hotbed of gaming activity.
Scoring 7.95 out of 10, Montreal has quite a way to go if it’s ever going to stand a chance of catching up to Toronto’s gaming culture. While it ranked second in game development studios, as well as gaming conventions, with 29 and three respectively, it failed to land in first place for any category. That being said, it does have an impressive number of gaming jobs available — with 306. That’s more than double the number in Toronto.
=3. Edmonton and Calgary
Coming in joint third place are Edmonton and Calgary, with a score of 7.49 out of 10. Edmonton and Calgary scored similarly across most criteria, within a point or two of each other. The cities each have two gaming conventions, two board game conventions, and extremely similar average internet speeds of 264/265 Mbps, respectively.
The two Alberta cities really only diverged when it came to gaming developers, of which Edmonton had four more, with 21. They also have a big difference in games/entertainment centres — Calgary had 18 more than Edmonton, with 58.
5. Vancouver
Despite being known as the dream location of outdoorsy types, Vancouver scored well across the board. Ranking in fourth place with a score of 6.95 out of 10, Vancouver is proof that you can’t beat a good game. Even the beauty of Canada’s western wildernesses cannot compare.
While it scored pretty low for internet speeds of 239 Mbps, Vancouver is home to two gaming conventions, has 29 game developers, and has 137 gaming jobs advertised.
6. Ottawa
In sixth place, we’ve finally reached the capital city of Canada — Ottawa. While Ottawa may only be the fourth biggest Canadian city, it is home to both Canada’s Parliament, as well as 35 games and entertainment centres and three board game conventions. The most famous of these is CanGames — described as “friendly mayhem since 1977” this convention focuses on board games, as well as role-playing games and miniatures.
Ranking in sixth place with a score of 6.75 out of 10, Ottawa is evidence that even the most serious of cities can have a little fun.
7. Mississauga
A neighbour of Toronto on Lake Ontario, Mississauga lands in seventh place on our list. Despite its ample access to the Credit River and to Lake Ontario, the people of Mississauga still love to play some video games.
Mississauga has over 140 video game jobs available and is home to 29 games and entertainment centres. These scores help Mississauga to land in seventh place overall, with a score of 6.69 out of 10.
8. London
London, Ontario, has many famous educational institutions, access to gorgeous green spaces, and, most importantly, quick internet (270 Mbps).
Fast download speeds aside, London is also home to 16 games and entertainment centres and has 32 video game jobs on offer. Rather than walk along the Thames River, the people of London, Ontario, are rather fond of their digital entertainment. This gives the city a ranking of eighth place, with a score of 6.28 out of 10.
9. Burnaby
Burnaby is the third-largest city in British Columbia and the 19th-largest city in Canada. Located to the east of Vancouver, it falls under the Metro Vancouver Regional District. Despite its proximity to the decently-scoring Vancouver, Burnaby doesn’t do quite as well across the criteria.
While it has 143 gaming jobs available, it doesn’t have nearly as many games or entertainment centres, with just three, and the same is true of video game studios. This all gives Burnaby a score of 6.14 out of 10 and lands it in 9th place.
10. Brampton
Despite being the ninth-largest city in Canada and home to a population of over 600,000 people, Brampton scores just 5.62 out of 10. While it has 46 video game jobs available and 15 games and entertainment centres, Brampton has a distinct and disappointing lack of conventions and studios.
However, the area’s fast internet, at 277 Mbps, means Brampton comes in 10th place in the best Canadian cities for gamers.
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Canadian Cities with the Fastest Broadband
As many modern video games require internet access to play, broadband speeds can make or break a video game experience. Thankfully, advancements in internet technology mean download speeds are increasing every day. But which Canadian city has the quickest?
Hilariously referred to as the “Silicon Valley of the North”, Kitchener, Ontario, is a technology powerhouse. It is the base for many tech start-ups and innovation centres, particularly ones based in IT and software development. So it makes total sense that Kitchener would have achieved first place for broadband speed at 287 Mbps.
Toronto follows closely behind, with 283 Mbps. The largest city in Canada, the demand for internet is high here, and providers have clearly listened. Neighbouring Brampton scored similarly, with 277 Mbps.
The only city in the top five that isn’t in Ontario is Surrey, landing in fourth place. Known for its green spaces and parks, Surrey achieved an internet download speed of 271 Mbps. London, Ontario, follows closely behind with a broadband speed of 270 Mbps. \
Cities with the Most Gaming Conventions
Conventions are hugely popular. From ComicCon to VidCon, and everything in between, people love to gather en masse and celebrate their niche hobbies together. And this is no less true when it comes to video games and board games.
Toronto comes in first place for video game conventions. The city is home to four video game conventions, most notably Toronto Game Expo, which celebrates all aspects of geek culture. Toronto is lagging behind when it comes to board game conventions though, with just one held in the city.
Montreal lands in second place for gaming conventions, but ties for first place with Ottawa for board game conventions, with the cities hosting three each.
Vancouver, Calgary, Kingston, and Edmonton each host two gaming conventions a year. Bar Kingston, they also host two board game conventions apiece, the same number as Burnaby, Peterborough, and Oshawa.
Canadian Cities with the Most Game Developers and Video Game Jobs
Video game development is big business — the video game industry in Canada alone is worth at least $5.5 billion and is expected to grow to almost $8 billion by 2027. Many gamers, young and old alike, dream of making their own video games someday. So which Canadian city would be best for them to do so?
Toronto is, unsurprisingly, home to the most video game developers or studios, with 43. However, it doesn’t follow that it is the place gamers with career goals should move to — Toronto didn’t even make the top five when it came to game-related job recruitment.
Montreal also lands second for game studios, with 29, an accolade it shares with Vancouver. They are followed closely by Edmonton, which has 29 video game development studios, in fourth place, and Halifax in fifth, which has 21.
Longueuil is appearing for the first time in our rankings, as the place hiring for the most video game-based jobs, with 307 available.
Montreal and Laval share second place, with both cities having 306 video game jobs on offer.
Fourth place for video game jobs goes to Burnaby, which has 143 jobs advertised, followed immediately by Mississauga, which has 141.
Cities with the Most Games and Entertainment Centres
Games and entertainment centres offer something for every gamer, from slot machines, to fishing games, and from the data it’s clear they’re popular with a lot of Canadian gamers.
Toronto lands in first place with the most games and entertainment centres, with 74. The city is home to some famous and innovative gaming experiences, such as a flight simulator and virtual reality.
Calgary follows in second place, with a much fewer 59 games and entertainment centres. Much like Toronto, Calgary has some amazing and innovative game experiences on offer, such as a race car experience.
In third place is Montreal, which has 42 games and entertainment centres, followed closely by Edmonton, which has 40. Montreal is known for having a big vintage video game scene and has many arcades devoted to this.
Finally, Ottawa rounds out the top five. The Canadian capital is home to 35 games and entertainment centres.
Methodology
1. BonusFinder Canada wanted to reveal the best Canadian cities for gamers to live in.
2. In order to achieve that, they created a seed list of the 20 most populated cities in Canada using Data Commons.
3. Fixed download speeds were obtained from the Ookla dataset which has gridded worldwide internet speed data. The data was spatially joined with the coordinates of the cities in Canada using the Geopandas package in Python, which allowed for an average download speed (in megabits per second) per city to be obtained. The coordinates for Canada were obtained from the GADM geospatial data set, (except for Quebec and Montreal which were obtained from the overpass api).
4. Data was also collected on the number of gaming conventions in each city in 2023 using Video Games Cons for gaming conventions and Board Game Geek for board games conventions.
5. TripAdvisor was then used to count the number of ‘game and entertainment centres.
6. The number of game development companies in each province was found on Alberta Video Game Studios – Canadian Game Devs.
7. The number of gaming jobs in each city was found using Indeed (from June 6th 2023 to July 6th 2023), using the search term ‘video game’ as well as each city included in the seed list.
8. All data was then combined into a definitive ranking which was equally weighted. BonusFinder Canada was then able to assign a final score out of 10 to each city and determine which is best and worst for gamers.
9. Data is correct as of July 6th, 2023.
