The Long Dark is a fiercely Canadian video game. Why aren't there more like it?

You've crashed your plane into the side of a mountain on a remote island in the Canadian north. Your partner is nowhere to be found.

A geomagnetic disasterhas rendered phones, radios and all other electronic equipment inoperable.

The cold rushes in. Your body temperature's falling. You feel thirsty, hungryand tired you're burning calories just staying awake.Frantically, you search the area for branches and splinters of wood to build a fire. You pick up a single box of matches scavenged from a dilapidated supply box nearby.

With luck, you'll have about three hours before the fire burns out. You melt a bunch of snow into a bucket of waterto relieve your parched mouth.

For a moment, you take in the majestic landscape. The sun caststhe snowy mountains and forest in orange light. A Canadian flag flies next to a lighthouse on the edge of the frozen lake. You hold on tightlyto your tuque.

This fight for survival is the core experience of The Long Dark, which was recently released after several years in an "Early Access" preview version.Hinterland Studios, the Vancouver-based team behind the game, calls it a "quiet apocalypse."This isn't The Walking Dead. There are no zombies to fight, only Mother Nature. (OK, and the occasional wolf or bear.)

It's also one of onlya handful of games that wears its Canadian identity on its sleeve. Hinterland founder Raphael vanLieropsaid hisobjective from the start was to make a game "that didn't shy away from being Canadian."

"We've got great Canadian authors and musicians and artists and filmmakers where are the Canadian game makers that have a unique Canadian voice and Canadian point of view?" he said.

What is a 'Canadian game'?

According to a 2016 report from the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, there are 470 video game studios in the country, employing more than 20,000 people with an average yearly salary of $71,300. The industry contributes $3 billion to Canada's annual GDP.

Some of the highest-profile games in the world, such as Assassin's Creed, FIFAsoccer and Mass Effect,are made in Canada. Highly anticipated upcoming games include Bioware Edmonton's Anthemand an unnamed Star Wars game from Electronic Arts' Motive studio in Montreal.

• Ubisoft opens office in Saguenay as part of Quebec expansion plans
• 'He would be very proud': Edmonton developer's videogame completed after death

Yet for all these impressive statistics, you'll rarely see so much as a Canadian flag in games made here. If Canada is such a force in the world of video games,thenwhy do we so rarely see it in our products?

Part of it comes down to sheer numbers.While it's a major hub of video game development, Canada has far fewer players than countries such as the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

According to a 2016 report from gaming analytics firmNewzoo,Canada generates about $2.2 billion in video game revenue annually. That's ninth in the world, far less than the U.S.($28 billion) and China ($29 billion).

Since Canadian players comprise such a small slice of the gaming pie, there's little incentive to design a game specifically for Canadians.

"If you're making a game about Canada, and you're focusing on selling it in Canada, I'd probably say it's a bad business decision, honestly," said ESA Canada'sCEO,Jayson Hilchie. "Because the market here just isn't that big."

ESA Canada's reports tout domestic studios' output and critical acclaim, and pays less attention to whether the games' subject matter features explicitly Canadian themes or settings.

"When you look at things like Assassin's Creed and FIFA, these are the biggest games in the world, and they're all made in Canada, mainly by Canadians, right? So do they have to be about Canada for them to be Canadian? I think that's a question I'm not able to answer," he said.

According to the CRTC, video games do not fall under the Broadcasting Act, which encourages producers to make content on radio, television and film that "reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values, and artistic creativity."

In a recent survey, a majority of Canadians said that online media should not be subject to the same content regulations as traditional media. The survey was mostly concerned with streaming music and television services.

Independent organizationssuch as the Canada Media Fund (CMF)support new media projects, including video games. The Long Dark is one of them, and Hinterlandpaid off its CMF loan after its successful Kickstarter campaign and Early Access-period sales.CMF hashistorically supported smaller, independent game studios, because it doesn't offer loans or grants to foreign-owned studios like Paris-owned Ubisoftor Bioware, which is owned by U.S. publisher EA.

'Set it in Alaska'

Van Lieropsaid he would have had trouble pitchingThe Long Dark to a large publisher like EA or Activision.

"If Ihad taken The Long Dark's concept to a publisher at some point, in the early phases of the project, they would have said, 'This is a great idea, but let's set it in Alaska, because Alaska's going to be more marketable,'" he said.

"That's very common in the industry, and I think you can understand the business reasons behind it.... We should have a significant cultural footprint in the industry, and yet in a lot of ways, it felt like we were, in some ways, work-for-hire for publishers owned by people from other countries."

Van Lierop knows this from experience.As part of B.C.-based Relic Entertainment,hepreviously worked on critically acclaimed games such asCompany of Heroes and Warhammer40,000: Dawn of War. His other credits include work withUbisofton the popular Far Cry series.

Assuccessfulas these were, hedidn't see enough of himselfor his heritagein thatwork. So he leftand founded a small independent team called Hinterland.He movedto a small home in theComoxValley on Vancouver Island, closer to the mountains, valleys and forests that influenced the visual palette of what would eventually becomeThe Long Dark.

Hinterland debuted the game in2013 with aKickstartercampaign,raising more than$250,000. The game has been in an unfinished, or Early Access, mode since 2014. Players could challenge the elements in multiple locations, with the studio refining the visuals and mechanicsand adding features along the way.

This ended in August with the launch ofWintermute, a long-promised story mode thatcombines the survivalist adventure with a fully scripted plot.Wintermute'scast includes several prominent Canadian voice actors, including MarkMeerand Jennifer Hale (who played the male and female versions of CommanderShepardin the Mass Effect games).

• Video game Kna puts northern Quebec in spotlight
• Toronto-made indie game Alone With You mixes sci-fi adventure with dating simulators

Alexandre Fiset followed a similar path to van Lierop. After working on several successful Spider-Man games for Activision, he founded his own studio, Parabole. In March, after three years in Early Access, the studio releasedKona, a mystery game set innorthern Quebec and steeped in Quebecois and Indigenous culture.

According to Fiset, such a game can indeed find an audience, but most players won't gravitate towards it solely because of its Canadian-ness.

"It's all about the standard of the graphics and the gameplay and all the stuff that is in the game and that people will look at on the online stores," he said.

Sly references

Given the perceived risks of going all-in for a game set in Canada, most homegrowndevelopers content themselves with sly cultural references.

"I think Canadian creators always face that struggle between wanting to include more homegrown contentbut worrying about alienating their biggest audience, which is usually players in the U.S.," saidgames developer Benjamin Rivers.

In the sci-fi romance game Alone with You, Rivers includes supporting characters and organizations with names such asHudson-Cartier and Laurier.

"We chose to turn our Canadian content into non-essential lore that would be fun for Canadians to discover, but wouldn't require any kind of understanding of the culture to appreciate," Rivers said.

Players don't need to understand all the references to Canadian culture in The Long Dark to enjoy it. But that hasn't stopped van Lierop and his team from infusing it with more Canadian flavour than an hour's worth of Heritage Minutes.

Whileindustry wisdom would suggest this is a failing proposition, the game'sCanadian themeshaven'tappeared to limit its audience. Since its Early Access debut in 2014, The Long Dark hassold more than 1.4 million copies, with players embracing its often punishing survival challenges.

"It doesn't seem to be slowing down," said van Lierop, "sowhatever mix of elements the Canadian setting, the wilderness survival aspect, the tone of the game, the art style really seems to be working well."