Instability hung like a brooding rain cloud above this year's Game Developers Conference, where designers, artists, musicians, marketers, publicists and executives from thousand-person studios and single-person bedrooms alike convened to learn and reflect.

Knowing this, Cheng chose to resist higher tax breaks in Montreal, unlike many of his fellow Canadian triple-A competitors, who've all but abandoned Vancouver over the past couple years. Work is readily exported and relocated for cheap labor and high tax breaks. Unlike jobs in the film industry, video game jobs are neither centralized nor unionized.

The list of layoffs and closures is so long and exhausting that it's tempting to skim over them and not register this truth: more than a thousand people went home from work sometime between New Year's Day and today stripped of income, health insurance and a single clue what the future in this industry might entail. And one of its competitors, THQ, dissolved after being picked apart by creditors, investment firms and former rivals. The second biggest publisher in the industry, Electronic Arts, laid off 10 percent of its staff - approximately 900 people. Funcom closed its Beijing studio Zynga closed its Baltimore and Japan studios, then consolidated the rest Atari closed Eden Games Disney closed Junction Point and LucasArts and TimeGate closed itself. In the first four months of 2013, at least 18 studios have contributed to nearly 2,000 layoffs. With the company's latest game, a survival simulator (fittingly) called Don't Starve, he's proved it. Co-founder Jamie Cheng believes fair pay, minimal overtime and creative freedom are sustainable - even profitable - strategies.

In the video game industry, is stability just another fantasy?Klei Entertainment, an independent game studio in downtown Vancouver, is audaciously in pursuit of normalcy.

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