ne of the world’s best-known digital entertainment studios opened up an online social gaming studio in Vancouver Tuesday afternoon.

Japan’s Namco Bandai Studios, known for classic titles such as Pac-Man and Tekken, will employ about 30 people to work on mobile and online game production at the North American hub of operations.

The new player on the city’s gaming scene was welcomed by Vancouver’s video gaming elite at a ceremony in the new Centre for Digital Media office on Great Northern Way, where the Japanese company has signed a two-year lease.

Through an interpreter, Namco Bandai Studios President Hajime Nakatani said Vancouver beat out Montreal and Toronto because of its sizable “cluster” of digital artists and engineers.

“The market is quite big in North America — there is room to grow for us,” Nakatani said, adding that the company wants to put out more mobile and online games, which now make up about a fifth of all its titles.

Apart from its vast catalogue of popular characters and older games it can draw on for newer titles, Namco can leverage its profitable stable of Japanese arcade games, Nakatani said.

In the busy arcades of Tokyo and other cities, players often compete with others via an Internet connection — much like mobile games on smartphones and tablets in North America, he added.

Six CDM students spent the past 10 weeks working with Namco to produce Lalaland, a simple drumming game unveiled at Tuesday’s event that impressed the dozen Namco executives with its innovative gameplay, according to CDM director Richard Smith.

“We think it’s a mutual benefit — we see it as opportunities for our students,” Smith said. “We require that our students work on industry-sponsored projects.”

The Vancouver office might initially hire an intern or two directly from the centre and then go on to work directly with teams of students to develop new games, Smith said.

“We’ll start small, but if they grow we’ll grow,” he said, adding that there is room for more development on the lot adjacent to Namco’s new office.

“One of the things that is attractive about Canada, I think, is the people are just as skilled and they are less likely to jump ship and disappear like in San Francisco or L.A.,” Smith said. “Here’s a place you can build up a team and they’re not going to disappear on you.

“And, importantly for Bandai, it can be a team of North Americans that can help them design games that North Americans want to play.”

About 30 per cent of graduates from the Centre for Digital Media find work in the gaming industry after graduation.

Abbotsford MP and Minister of International Trade Ed Fast said he met with Namco executives while on a trade mission to Japan six months ago and sold them on Canada’s talent pool.

“(We) again drove home the fact that Canada is a place that should be their gateway into North America ... clearly they listened,” Fast said. “Hopefully the success they experience right here in Vancouver will translate to further job opportunities right across the country.”