Dallas' Game Industry

[SIZE=+2]Plano, area cities looking to video game industry for jobs

[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]02:00 PM CDT on Saturday, April 4, 2009

[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]By THEODORE KIM / The Dallas Morning News
tkim@dallasnews.com [/SIZE] In a mundane Plano office park, video game start-up Robot Entertainment is quietly hatching the next world conquest or wizard hero or space battle.

"Here we are plopped in the suburbs, and we meet people all the time who are like, 'You created Halo Wars?' " said Patrick Hudson, the firm's vice president of operations, referring to the hit game franchise.
Plano and its neighbors have long labored to till a miniature Silicon Valley on the North Texas prairie. The goal: Draw the jobs and tax dollars of a trade that has evolved from geek-prone garage pastime to billion-dollar business.
Many still regard the Dallas area as an outpost compared with other U.S. gaming hubs such as San Francisco, Seattle and even Austin.
But with the changing economic winds stoking brushfires of entrepreneurship within the industry, communities starved for job growth are now looking to capitalize.

"We have an emerging cluster here. I think we have a strong shot of creating some muscle," said Sally Bane, executive director of Plano's economic development board.

The modern industry took root in North Texas in the 1990s, when Mesquite's id Software struck it rich with the blockbuster games Doom and Quake.

North Texas is now home to a collection of firms, including Plano's Gearbox Software, one of the nation's largest independent game developers. Across Texas, video gaming constitutes an industry worth more than $400 million that employs about 7,600 people, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Figures like those are alluring to cities like Plano, which faces a slowdown in home building and a budget deficit at City Hall. Attracting tech firms, which offer the promise of high-dollar jobs and tax dollars, is a surefire avenue toward new growth.

Economic-development officials have tried to build on the region's gaming success, as well as leverage the presence of a graduate-level game design program at Southern Methodist University's Plano campus.

Tech expansion

Progress has come in fits and starts.
Plano's efforts appeared to pay off last year when the city, with the help of cash grants and tax breaks, lured Microsoft's Ensemble Studios away from Dallas to a prime office atop the Shops at Legacy. That deal fell through in September when Microsoft announced it would be closing Ensemble, best known for crafting Age of Empires and Halo Wars.

Yet amid the studio's breakup are traces of the plucky overnight entrepreneurship that has helped define California's Silicon Valley.
No fewer than four local start-up firms have sprouted from Ensemble's ashes, including Robot Entertainment. The others are Bonfire Studios, Windstorm Studios and Newtoy, a firm founded by two brothers that has created a successful iPhone chess game.

Flashes in the pan? Perhaps. But those behind the fledgling companies say their efforts could herald a fresh round of independent tech expansion in a region synonymous with oil, real estate and other industries.
That would be welcome news for many cities weighed down recently by job losses and stagnant home values.

"There's just so much room for growth," said Dusty Monk, a former Ensemble programmer who recently launched Windstorm Studios. "I think we're on the brink of a gaming renaissance here."
He then joked, "I guess I'll find out in the next six months."

Courting newcomers

The competition to land the new firms has already intensified.
David Rippy, a founder of Bonfire Studios, said officials from several communities, including Plano and Allen, courted the start-up in earnest.
The firm decided to stay in the same Dallas high-rise as Ensemble, in part to save on moving costs.

Higher stakes aside, game developers are still drawn to the campy, garage appeal of days past.

Rippy and his colleagues decided on the name Bonfire to evoke a circle of gamers chatting around a campfire.

"We originally were thinking Campfire. But we wanted it to be something bigger," said Bill Jackson, Bonfire's lead designer. "We thought, 'Why talk around a campfire when you can talk around a bonfire?' "
Cities across North Texas are trying to capture that heat.

GAMING START-UPS

Several video game companies have emerged from Microsoft's Ensemble Studios, which closed this year. Among them:

Robot Entertainment
Based in: Plano Working on: projects for Microsoft, other efforts

Bonfire Studios
Based in: Dallas Working on: undisclosed project

Windstorm Studios
Based in: McKinney Working on: undisclosed project

Newtoy
Based in: Dallas Working on: games for the iPhone and iPod Touch