Feature: 'Can Austin Become the Hollywood of Games?'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, an all-star cast of game developers, game publishers, entertainment attorneys, and film producers met at SXSW in Austin to look at Austin, its strengths, and the hurdles it faces in striving to become a game development mecca. In this extract, Amaze Entertainment's Rodney Gibbs commences the panel with the core questions facing the Texas technology hub: "Gibbs started by asking the panel, “What is keeping us from going to that next level? We've got a lot a great things going here. Some of these people at the table are on that short list of luminaries in the game world. But we haven't quite reached that pinnacle that some of our friends on the film side, like Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, people like that. Their business is based in California, like ours, but something about the film world really seems to be growing, whereas on the game side, we seem to be struggling a bit.” “When you make a game, you're in an office space,” said Ted Staloch, EVP of Publishing for Aspyr. “All the publishers out in LA: Activision, EALA, Pandemic: all great developers... Their office space looks just like ours. That's the creative side. The business side is publishing. The model of ‘how do you finance something?' That's where we need to grow up.” Staloch cited both his company, Asypr, and fellow Austin publisher, NCsoft." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including more on this particularly thought-provoking question (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).