The threat, "If X happens, I'm moving to Canada!" is said so often these days that it's become a cliche. People on both sides of the political aisle say it, especially around election season. Almost nobody follows through.

Texas businessman Mike Wilson, co-founder of independent video game publisher Devolver Digital, will move in a month.

"I'm an entrepreneur, so I do actually follow through on a lot of things that I say that other people just talk about," he says. "But I don't think other people believed that I meant it."

Wilson (not to be confused with Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson) has had a storied career in the video game industry here in Texas. Before his time in Austin, where he has lived with his family for the past 15 years, Wilson worked at Dallas-Fort Worth game developers Id Software (then based in Mesquite, currently in Richardson) and Ion Storm (was in Dallas, is now defunct).

Mike Wilson (second from right) with other members of Ion Storm, a former Dallas video game studio. (Scott Harben / Mike Wilson)

But after spending their whole lives in the southern U.S., Mike, his wife Melissa and their son Doug have sold their home and are preparing for a move to Victoria, British Columbia.

Keeping a promise

Wilson admits that the current White House administration isn't the only reason they're leaving. "That's one aspect of our lives. It's not everything," he says. But it's a big reason, and it served as a catalyst.

Before the election in November, his wife asked him to promise that if Donald Trump won the presidency, the family would move to Canada. It was an easy promise to make, especially at the time. "Mind you, this was when none of us believed [the election] was going to go that way," he says. "I guess she was afraid that like 99 percent of people that were saying that, we wouldn't really do it."

But there were enough personal reasons for the family to be against a Trump presidency that the promise was serious. Melissa is of Native American descent, and the events at Standing Rock (and the eventual approval of the Dakota Access pipeline) hit home for her. One of their daughters is gay and worries about her future and her ability to get married. Their younger daughter attends a state college, though the price for higher education is proving to be much higher than expected when the family started saving. Their son attends an "overcrowded" public school, Wilson says, that he fears is going downhill.

These and other issues added up, and the Wilson family decided it was time for a change.

Mike and Melissa Wilson with their oldest daughter, Deaven. She plans to stay in Austin after her parents and brother move to Canada. (Michael Lee Jackson / Courtesy photo)

"We've been really lucky in business and I've paid a lot of taxes over the last 15 years, and at some point I want to pay taxes into a system that I believe in," Wilson says, "where the money is actually going toward things like education and healthcare."

"We're not taking care of our people [in America]," Wilson says.

Mike and his wife grew up poor, he says, and when they had their first child at the age of 20, they relied on government assistance to feed the baby. "The things that helped me achieve the American dream were socialist programs," he says.

"That's what I believe in, is giving people a chance."

Wilson supported Bernie Sanders during the election and thinks the Democrats made a mistake in not backing "the candidate that people were excited about."

Doug Wilson, 9, wearing gloves with the Canadian flag. (Mike Wilson / Courtesy photo)

He worries that America is "hung up on its glory days" and is spending too much time looking backward instead of forward -- something he says is not dissimilar from how he's had a successful career. "The fact is that what used to work is not going to work for us in the future," he says. "It's the same as in business. Devolver is a very different company than even our other game businesses. You have to evolve and change, or you're left in the past. "

Since he can do his job from anywhere, he saw no reason to stick around. He has loved Austin, he says, and he shares fond memories of Dallas' game development scene in the '90s, but he says "it's getting harder to stay."

"I also make films and have a TV show in Austin," he says. "Canada is infinitely more supportive of that for funding and things like that. As you may have heard, Texas killed all of our incentives for film, which were pretty meager anyway."

"There's just no reason to stay in Texas if you're working in entertainment, sadly."

How Trump's policies affect video games worldwide

While Wilson stresses that his move is a personal decision for his family and that he does not wish to speak for his company (which will continue to have partners around the world, including Austin), Devolver Digital hasn't stayed entirely on the sidelines. In the wake of Trump's now-on-hold travel ban, the publisher offered up some of its Game Developers Conference (GDC) booth space to people who were affected.

If you canceled plans to demo a game at GDC due to the US immigration ban, we’d like to demo it on your behalf. https://t.co/XSsi58dit2 pic.twitter.com/16pY2kOeol — Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) February 2, 2017

They dubbed their location on the show floor "Devolver Underground" and offered to set up computers (and even VR headsets, if needed) to show off games from developers in countries who were banned from entering the U.S.

Always Americans

Wilson's daughters Deaven and Halen, both adults, will be staying in the U.S. They, along with other family and friends, are reason enough for him not to want the country to fail. Wilson says he and his wife believe the government is taking us backwards, but they hope that the ship can be turned around.

Even after the election, they hoped that much of Trump's talk was "just a lot of bluster" and that things wouldn't be as bad as they feared, but they haven't been encouraged by his first month in office. "We really hope that [the country] can sort this out," he says.

"We're not like, 'Screw you, America!' We want America to get through this."

Still, if things do get progressively worse ("dangerously bad" as opposed to just "annoyingly and philosophically bad," Wilson says) he wants to show people that getting away is an option. "Hopefully we will have demonstrated and provided a bridge for people who are thinking about doing this but think it might be too hard."

"We're Americans and we're always going to be Americans," Wilson says.