Let’s start with last summer, when retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling announced he was moving his video game start-up, 38 Studios, from Maynard to Providence, lured by a $75 million financing package from the state’s economic development agency.
Zynga, the leading maker of so-called social games played on Facebook, acquired two small Boston-area game companies, Conduit Labs and Floodgate Entertainment, for undisclosed sums - primarily to get its hands on programming talent. San Francisco-based Zynga promptly killed the two Facebook games Conduit had developed.
Harmonix, perhaps the second-biggest game developer in the state, laid off about 30 employees from its staff of 240 in February after getting acquired late last year by a New York private equity firm. In June, New Jersey-based Majesco Entertainment paid less than $1 million for most of the assets of Foxborough-based Quick Hit, which had built a Web-based football game and raised more than $13 million.
Smaller companies have struggled, too. Blue Fang Games, best known for the Zoo Tycoon series that invited players to manage a menagerie, laid off much of its creative development team last month. Four-person Macguffin Games called it quits last December after a Facebook game called Mustache Mercenaries didn’t take off. (It blended historical characters like Harriet Tubman with steam-powered robots.)
By most estimates, the Massachusetts video game industry is tiny. The Entertainment Software Association last year estimated total direct employment in the industry at just shy of 1,300 people, with an average salary of $83,335. But let’s be honest: designing games is sexier than making low-input bias current amplifiers. (Sorry, Analog Devices.) And when game companies crank out hits, as Harmonix did with its Rock Band music game and as Irrational Games of Quincy did with BioShock, a game set in an underwater city populated by mutants, they can generate press around the world, and attract talent to the state. The gaming business also provides a reason for recent college grads to stick around.
