Where in the world are game developers?
The opening keynote of Nordic Game 06 was provided by Alain Tascan, the studio boss of EA Montreal since its founding three years ago. (You may recall his dispute with Ubisoft over employment contracts earlier this year.) His talk looked at game development hotspots around the world. Tascan pointed out that game production, compared to movie production, is much more spread out around the globe, with talent clustering in likely and unlikely places. He showed a world map with current development hotspots, featuring the usual suspects: California, Austin, Montreal, Vancouver, France, UK and finally Japan. According to Tascan, some of these locations are losing relevance, such as Austin, Texas, which he said has “collapsed”. The UK has also been weak for over a decade, while he predicts tough times for France as Atari’s mother company Infogrames is facing difficult financial problems. He went on to list a number of factors that attract game studios to certain locations, most of which are o
