Hyper Hippo in Kelowna.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Hyper Hippo Entertainment

A Kelowna-based gaming company has nearly doubled its employees and many are opting to enjoy big-city lifestyles with new work-from-home models.

In Kelowna, there are more than 200 animation, film and digital media companies, employing more than 2,450 people, according to Accelerate Okanagan.

Some of these include Sand Panda Studios and Hyper Hippo. 

Jennifer Kilback, chief business officer with Hyper Hippo, said the company has almost doubled since the end of last summer, growing from 60 to 110 employees. Hyper Hippo is a video game and software development company and was founded by Club Penguin’s Lance Priebe.

Club Penguin was called, at one time, the largest social network for kids.

READ MORE: Is Kelowna's Club Penguin fairy tale over?

“We’re growing our number of people in the Okanagan but we're also hiring people from outside the Okanagan,” Kilback said, adding a majority of employees are still based in Kelowna, where the company started.

“There’s growth in the gaming industry happening here in the Okanagan,” she said.

READ MORE: Okanagan tech companies eye up working from home permanently

The first year of the pandemic was good for the gaming industry and although those expectations are down for 2021 going into 2022, it’s still a growing industry. Hiring remotely because of the pandemic has opened up possibilities that existed before but weren't acted on, Kilback said.

Both Microsoft and Sony reported record growth figures for their gaming revenue streams in 2020, and the console sector alone made more than $45 billion, according to Forbes.

“We’ve become used to that distributed workplace.... We’ve spent the time building out the ability to work in that way and our onboarding process to bring new people in we’ve really refined,” Kilback said.

READ MORE: Professional video game player from Kelowna among top Canadian earners

The gaming company is still actively hiring in the Okanagan but Vancouver is an attractive city, so it’s the second biggest location for their team with roughly 30 employees located there. The Greater Toronto area is another population destination and they have 17 employees there, with a few in Montreal as well, she said.

Kilback believes with remote work, the industry is reinventing where gaming hubs will be located.

READ MORE: Okanagan tech companies eye up working from home permanently

“There’s people who are drawn to the lifestyle we have in the Okanagan for sure but a lot of people still love the amenities of a big centre and that’s what they’re interested in too and obviously, the other draw in a bigger centre is you have other opportunities. If it doesn’t work out with Hyper Hippo, I can go across the street and get a job with another gaming company and we haven’t built that ecosystem here and based on our population it will be a while before we get to that level of transferability in a gaming role.”

— This story was corrected Nov. 1, 2021 to say Hyper Hippo was founded by Club Penguin’s Lance Priebe, not Lane Merrifield.

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