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Lousiana Attempting to Attract Game Industry

Posted by Zonk on from the head-south-for-creole-and-game-development dept.

Academomancer writes "Yahoo reports that Louisiana is trying to lure the game industry with tax incentives and a marketing campaign. From the article: Mark Smith, entertainment director for the state economic development department, said he aims to integrate video gaming into the state's entertainment industry, bringing together music, film and digital production.

1 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Chickens and eggs by 2megs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Back when you needed one animator to put out a product, it made sense to have him on staff permanently. Now you might need twenty or more animators for a brief period on a product's development cycle. The only companies that can keep them around fulltime are those big enough (like EA) to have enough products in development that they can be moved around. Thus, the industry is moving towards contractors who move from company to company on a per-project basis, much as the film industry does now.

    For that to work, you need a critical mass of both people and companies in an area. If you don't have that, there's no pool of workers to hire when projects need to ramp up, and nowhere else for those workers to earn a paycheck when projects ramp down.

    Louisiana has neither right now. And there's no incentive for one to come unless the other is already there.