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Texas was once the world’s foremost hub of games development. It’s a tragedy that Texas squandered the opportunity to foster a robust games development ecosystem, which could be contributing billions to the local economy (1/X)
2/ id software (Doom / Quake), 3DRealms (Duke Nuke), Gearbox (Half-Life mods), Terminal Reality (Fury3), Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires), Ion Storm (Deus Ex) et al were influential Texas-based studios in the late 90s / early 2000s that created massively popular franchises
3/ Yet, just 20-ish years later, the video games sector is almost nonexistent in Texas. What happened? Why isn’t Texas, having birthed such influential companies, a games development hub in the way Finland is?
4/ First: these companies were mostly self-funded, and they built AAA PC / console games (content), not platforms. A company with a singular focus on developing content can only grow to be so large, especially if it only pursues one project at a time per studio
5/ Second: these companies relied on publishers for distribution and marketing. If a studio is only producing the content, its staff doesnt need to be that large, and so these companies were relatively small and specialized from a headcount perspective
6/ Third: as game development cycles became longer and more expensive, each and every release was a potentially existential flip of the coin. Again: these companies werent diversified, they mostly focused on 1-2 titles at a time. A flop could kill a studio.
7/ Having the resources of a Microsoft or ZeniMax or EA alleviated personal risk for the founders, who were the owners of these companies. And because they hadnt raised money, founders could become fantastically wealthy in transactions considered small by VC standards
8/ The Finnish government recognizes the cash cow it has in the local games development ecosystem and nurtures and supports it. The Finnish government lavishes risk-free money on gaming startups because of how much money the gaming economy contributes to Finnish GDP
9/ Meanwhile, Texas has slashed the budget of its incentive program for local Film, TV, and Video Game production initiatives https://www.statesman.com/news/20190128/texas-lawmakers-again-set-to-weigh-incentives-for-film-video-game-industries
10/ @Warren_Spector was appointed Director of the Denius-Sams game design academy at @UTAustin, but he left in 2016 and that program appears to have been shuttered, replaced with a fairly superficial, thin curriculum https://designcreativetech.utexas.edu/news/ut-launches-new-gaming-curriculum
11/ And in any case, you dont learn game design exclusively in a classroom. Without local companies to run entry-level grad and intern programs, aspiring game designers / marketers / publishing execs need to go elsewhere to learn the trade
12/ Again, contrast this with Finland. Aalto University features a number of video games-centric curricula, and internship programs abound. The local video games ecosystem in that way is self-sustaining.
13/ Every state should want to host a large video games development ecosystem, especially now: these companies have worldwide customer reach / scale, they employ a large number of other professional services, and they pay employees very well.
14/ It’s a borderline scandal that Texas allowed its once-vibrant video game industry to become desiccated. A state can’t will the next Epic / Roblox / Valve / Supercell into existence: the industry needs to be supported and nurtured at the local level.
