I think I have a love/hate relationship with New York — that is to say that I think I will have a love/hate relationship with New York very, very soon. In an interview from 2001, Eric Zimmerman — co-founder and CEO of gameLab — had this to say about the city that never sleeps (or is that Vegas?):
We’re working in New York City, which is a complete wasteland as far as the game industry is concerned–but we’d like to counter the California-based culture of US gaming with new kinds of aesthetic languages, new genres of narrative and cultural content, and (of course) new forms of gameplay.
Of course, five years down the line, the situation hasn’t changed. The New York industry scene is still dry, with only a few notable exceptions. If NYC is to be the potential front for innovation in western game design, as Zimmerman suggests above, it’s still got a ways to go.
But then, in an entirely selfish way, I wonder if I want New York to become the scene for innovative game design in the US. I’ve spent my entire life on the east coast of America, and especially after this semester in the perpetually-gray city of Dublin, I feel like I’m going to want a little less cloud in my life after college, and a little more sun.
Even thinking about this makes me feel a little guilty. After all, I’ve felt more than a little resentment regarding the bias the games industry has towards the west coast (E3 2007 in Philly, everyone!), and I wholly acknowledge my own duplicity when it comes to this problem. Still, I can understand the draw many companies feel to the warm west, and wonder if maybe the gloomy weather acts as a sort of filter, which ensures a large number of backward-thinking developers will depart for the other side of country to leave the forward-thinkers in Manhattan.
Or maybe there’s something in the water…
Update: Okay, maybe I was being a bit harsh in the above post, with regards to the state of creative game design on the west coast. I completely forgot about Cloud, and, more importantly, the MFA program through which it’s being developed. At this point, I’m not really thinking about grad school, but USC’s Interactive Media Division seems to be doing some pretty great things in game design. Just food for thought. -sj
Update 2: We’ve heard from the east coast, and the west coast. But what about Texas? Gamasutra tackles this question in its latest feature, Can Austin Become the Hollywood of Games?, a wrapup from one particularly lively panel from the recent SxSW conference. -sj