Well after a close call with that stupid Jack Thompson pushed bill seems like the legislators are figuring out game companies are actually a good thing to have around. They are looking to potentially offer tax breaks similar to what is offered to the movie industry to game publishers/developers. Apparently our Governor has even made a trip out to EA to pitch it.
nods
I did some interviews with the guys at Iron Forge and some smaller devs and attended a mobile gaming conference at MIT a couple of years back and there’s already a really great indie game dev culture in Boston and the surrounding areas + some great gaming-related startups that just need a bit of attention.
Of course, my articles ended up stuck at the university level and never broke out into the city’s press, so I guess that didn’t help as much as it could have.
Best of luck, Boston. sniffs I hope you do alright without me after May. . .
Hmm seems my departure from Massachusetts might have been ill-timed. Oh well, I’m happy to be back in my hometown.
<snide>
We give tax breaks to the movie industry? Does the movie industry know this? Are there actually any movie studios in Massachusetts? Maybe we should offer breaks like the biotech firms get, at least there are some of those actually in the state…
</snide>
Well, no there aren’t really any movie studios here but we do offer tax breaks to companies that film their movies here. From 2006 to 2008 it looks like 544 Million was spent filming in MA.
Actually, yes, we’re building a movie studio in Plymouth:
And there is a ton of game companies…matter of fact 3 of the top 10 games of 2k7 were developed here- LOTRO,Rock Band and Bioshock.
RIP Impressions Games, Stainless Steel Studios, Papyrus, Looking Glass, Iron Lore, etc… that were in MA.
I’d actually been to Papyrus. My old industrial band was approached to do music for IndyCar 2, didn’t work out in the end though.
Paaaraamount.
(For someone from Boston, I’m terrible at these jokes.)
Gee, i thought the thread meant Martial Arts at first.
Georgia wants them, too!
Don’t come to Georgia, game companies. Atlanta is a traffic nightmare, banjo playing psychopaths lurk in the frighteningly nearby mountains, we have crazy racists carving shit in said mountains, and our only attraction worth visiting is a bar.
It is a very good bar, though.
On the other hand, you will have no trouble finding cheap help moving your furniture.
I just made it up on the fly. You know, boardem yada yada
Atlanta =/= Georgia! Athens is much nicer. ;)
. . . and the rest of it is still terrifying.
/shrug
I grew up in the Northeast and have lived in Texas and the Midwest as well, and I’ve not been frightened.