Game Dev

The 2023 Wisconsin Games Alliance M+DEV Conference: A Hub for Game Development and Innovation

Jessica Reilly · Nov 28, 2023 ·

Jason Fields MadREP CEO Panel Discussion Gaming Event — Jason M. Fields, MadREP CEO and experienced economic development professional, recently participated in a panel discussion focused on the thriving gaming sector in Wisconsin’s Madison Region.

The Wisconsin Games Alliance M+DEV conference in 2023 signaled an exciting shift in the gaming industry landscape. With participation soaring up by 60% from the previous year, the event attracted over 750 in-person attendees and 100 online participants, underscoring the vibrant growth of the gaming sector in Wisconsin.

The global games industry, generating a staggering $190 billion in annual revenue, is witnessing an increasing concentration of major studios in Wisconsin. With big players like Microsoft, Krafton, Gearbox/Embracer Group, Entertainment Arts, and Epic Games now calling Wisconsin home, the state is emerging as a significant hotspot for game development.

One of the highlights of the conference was the revelation of why Entertainment Arts chose Wisconsin as the location for its third Respawn Studios, joining its other establishments in Los Angeles and Vancouver. The decision was influenced by factors such as Wisconsin’s high quality of life, lower cost of living, and abundance of talent in the gaming industry. The state’s favorable conditions also enable companies to implement a hybrid model, which is increasingly popular due to shorter commute times.

Despite these advantages, industry leaders suggested that one area that Madison could improve to further support the sector is by increasing the number of direct flights. This unexpected but crucial insight underscores the global nature of the gaming industry and the importance of connectivity in fostering its growth.

The landscape of game development and eSports has never been more exciting, and the Wisconsin Games Alliance M+DEV conference stands as testament to this. As the average salary in game development hovers around $120K per year, the sector promises fruitful careers and a thriving industry, shaping Wisconsin as a magnet for talent and innovation in the gaming realm.

The Madison Region Economic Partnership played a pivotal role in the creation of M+DEV and the Wisconsin Games Alliance, cementing Wisconsin’s position in the global gaming industry. Our dedicated efforts in fostering partnerships, promoting regional growth, and aligning economic development strategies have not only attracted gaming giants to the region but also nurtured local talent. By recognizing the enormous potential of the gaming industry and its capacity to stimulate economic growth, the Madison Region Economic Partnership has been instrumental in transforming Wisconsin into a vibrant hub of game development and e-sports. It serves as a testament to how strategic leadership, coupled with a supportive environment, can unlock a region’s potential and shape its future.

Wisconsin State Journal: ‘Call of Duty’ fans to pack Orpheum as professional esports make Madison debut

Jessica Reilly · Mar 27, 2023 ·

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

With all the glitz of a rock concert and the high stakes of a pro sports qualifying match, professional esports is making its Madison debut.

Some 1,000 video game fans are expected to pack the Orpheum Theater Saturday afternoon for a heated battle among top-tier “Call of Duty” pros, as Minnesota Røkkr, the host team, faces off against the Florida Mutineers and the L.A. Guerrillas.

Billed as the “Minnesota Røkkr Home Series,” the event pits one four-player team against another in real time while the strategies and skills they employ in the military-style video game on their gaming stations is projected on a 32-foot-wide screen suspended above the stage.

“The experience is really a hybrid of a sporting event and a rock concert,” said Brett Diamond, who worked for the NFL for 11 years becoming COO of the esports organization Version1, which includes Røkkr as well as pro teams for the video games Rocket League and Valorant.

“If you’re just watching the fans, you could be at any professional sporting event,” Diamond said. “They are passionate, they are excited, they are cheering, they are chanting. The intensity and the passion that these fans bring to the event is one of the exciting things about it.”

For many years a variety of groups – from Destination Madison and the Madison Area Sports Commission to the Madison Region Economic Partnership, or MadREP — has eyed the booming world of professional esports.

But getting them to Madison is “something that we’ve been trying to figure out for probably 10 years, as esports has risen in popularity,” said Jamie Patrick, vice-president for convention sales, sports and services at Destination Madison and the Madison Area Sports Commission. “We needed to start planting our flag and hosting a really cool event.”

“Esports is a huge global industry,” said Jennifer Javornik, co-founder of the Wisconsin Games Alliance, the professional association for the video game industry in the state. “North America is a little bit behind Asia and Europe. Madison has all the components that should lead to a vibrant esports (scene). We have college teams that are doing really well and are relatively mature. We have the university, which is a huge concentration of the demographic that loves esports.”

“It was really important to get a professional esports team to Madison to start building that ecosystem and establishing Madison as an esports community,” she said. “I see esports as something that helps our cred as a hub of the video game industry.”

Making the playoffs

A subset of the broader video game industry, esports can be played online or at a live event, and at varying levels. Madison has held a few smaller live esport events, “but nothing professional,” said Joe Hanson, head esports coach at Madison Area Technical College, which has a thriving esports program and a state-of-the-art gaming facility at its Truax campus. As with a growing number of colleges, esports is now an official part of the MATC athletics department.

The atmosphere at a live esports competition — like the Minnesota Røkkr Major II in Prior Lake, Minnesota, shown here — is a hybrid of a rock concert and pro sports event, organizers say.

Importing a pro competition like the Røkkr event “is a large step in the right direction,” said Hanson, who plans to attend Saturday with his 17-year-old son. MATC, also known as Madison College, will also be welcoming the three competing teams, who can use the school’s esports space to warm up, he said.

“It’s pretty awesome to think that we’re going to have three professional esport teams just hanging out in our lab,” he said, “using it essentially as a practice arena before their weekend events.”

Saturday’s four-hour, regular seasonal competition at the Orpheum will include matches at 2 and 5 p.m., plus a live match at another location shown virtually in between. Diamond expects about a third of Saturday’s fans will come from out of state, and the rest from across Wisconsin.

Røkkr (pronounced “rocker”) and its two opponents from Florida and California all have mixed records this year, “which makes it exciting, where everyone’s fighting to make the playoffs,” Diamond said. The teams are about halfway through their season, “so the teams are jockeying for playoff contention, and every match really matters.”

Røkkr is one of a dozen teams — 10 from the U.S., one each from Toronto and London — vying for a spot in the “Call of Duty” league championships to be held in June, with a first-place prize of $1.2 million.

“These players are the best in the world at what they do. And what they happen to do is playing video games,” Diamond said.

“The time they put in, whether it’s practice, watching film, their workout routine — they put in the same amount of hours per day that an NFL player does,” he said. And “the fans are just as invested in the wins and losses as any traditional sports fan.”

Growing up with the game

Part of a team

Owned in part by the Wilf family, also owners of the Minnesota Vikings, Version1 is stepping out of its home state for the first time with the Røkkr event in Madison, Diamond said.

In 2021, the region’s software development industry, which includes game development, grossed $1.9 billion overall, according to statistics from MadREP. Jobs in the region’s software development sector number over 12,000, more than six times the national average for a region of similar size. That area job growth is projected to continue a steady 9% annual rise into 2026, according to a 2021 report.

And Madison-area colleges are well on board with the esports trend. Increasingly used as a recruiting tool, strong esports programs can give students from all walks of life a sense of camaraderie and a greater sense of connection to their school, Hanson said.

“There’s still a lot of growth that can happen in esports,” he said. “At the collegiate level, it’s exploding right now.”

“The esports world is definitely blowing up, and young people are looking to be part of a team,” agreed Suann Saltzberry, director of athletics at Edgewood College, which brought on an esports coach in early 2022 and offers scholarships for esports athletes.

“It’s an area of growth, because these kids are looking to continue to play, and to play at a competitive level,” Saltzberry said. “We’re looking to potentially renovate our esports arena space here on campus, to make it bigger and offer more PCs so more players can play at the same time. It’s been interesting for me to understand the logistics behind it and how it works, but there are kids choosing colleges for what they offer in esports.”

Fans provide a lot of the energy at live esports events, like this past competition featuring the Røkkr “Call of Duty” team out of the Twin Cities.

UW-Madison doesn’t have an esports program, but it does have an official esports club with more than 1,500 members and competitive teams for 10 different esports, said club president Michael Verban. And while the club doesn’t currently have a designated campus home, the university plans to include an esports space in the Bakke Recwell and Wellbeing Center, a student athletic facility under construction on the west side of campus that is scheduled to open this fall, he said.

Drawing a crowd

Compared to many in-person pro esports events — which can fill U.S. stadiums with crowds of 13,000 to 20,000 people, and more than double that in Asia — the Røkkr competition in Madison and a second one in St. Paul on May 6 will have a different feel, Diamond said.

That’s by design. “We’re trying something new,” he said.

After touring possible sites including the Orpheum, Version1 “picked the venue, because they thought it had the vibe they were going for with their fans,” said Patrick of Destination Madison. “It’ll create an intimate atmosphere. The Orpheum’s got a lot of history. They just felt the vibe connected with who they are as a team.”

With its Downtown location and tickets priced from $33 (Gold VIP seats go for $238), Verban thinks there will be a lot of interest in Saturday’s event among college students.

“I can guarantee,” said the UW-Madison senior, “that there will be a lot of people who would love being able to see a live event in town.”

CORRECTION

This story has been updated to correct Brett Diamond’s title. Diamond is the COO of Version1.

Article originally published on madison.com

Wisconsin State Journal: Madison video game studio rapidly expands as broader sector eyes mergers

Jessica Reilly · Jan 27, 2023 ·

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

Lost Boys Interactive, a video game studio based in Madison, launched in 2017 with two co-founders who named their company to capture the mythos of the Lost Boys of Neverland.

The studio has now established itself as not only a large part of the Madison region’s video game enclave, but a major industry player with 350 employees in 36 U.S. states, said CEO and co-founder Shaun Nivens.

The company, which has a studio on the West Side, saw 1,255% revenue growth between 2021 and 2022 alone. It has helped gamers around the world explore new worlds, win epic battles, meet dynamic characters and embark on wild adventures by working on popular titles like “Call of Duty Online” and “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands,” a spin-off of the “Borderlands” series.

Lost Boys Interactive has developed games across other genres, too, including sports and sandbox, or games that allow a great degree of interactivity for the player.

Last April, the studio’s growth really took off when it was acquired by Gearbox, an indie interactive entertainment developer and publisher in Texas with 1,300 employees. Gearbox is owned by Embracer Group, a Sweden-based video game and media holding company.

The deal’s financial details were not disclosed, but it came as consolidation has been an increasingly common trend in the video game industry. Embracer itself makes up about a “fifth” of the sector, Nivens said. Lost Boys Interactive’s rapid expansion also comes as the tech industry at large grapples with layoffs and other economic hurdles.

“We connected with Gearbox at a conference,” said Nivens. He said the Texas company gives Lost Boys Interactive the manpower and resources to work on more expansive projects and allows the studio to maintain full control over operations. “They were our style,” he said.

Both companies also value hiring employees that are full-time and paid a fair wage, Nivens said. That’s because it’s a frequent industry practice for video game studios to hire contractors to save money, he said. Employers are not legally obligated to offer contractors benefits like health insurance.

“We feel it makes better games,” he said, adding that Lost Boys Interactive is set to hire at least 300 more employees within the next year.

Humble beginnings

Prior to the studio’s launch, Nivens and Stefanowicz had just parted ways with their previous employer, PerBlue, a local studio that makes mobile games such as “Disney Heroes.”

It was their combined passion for art and storytelling through video games, that motivated Niven and Stefanowicz to team up and create their own enterprise, Nivens said. Stefanowicz is a former Disney studio art director, and Nivens has an extensive software engineering background.

In a “pretty precarious start,” the studio’s only investment funding ever was the $50 it borrowed to open its first checking account, Stefanowicz said with a laugh. From there, the team used their already established business ties to pick up development gigs and hire workers wherever they could.

The studio scored its first “big” gig with with PUBG, maker of battle royale title PlayerUnknown’s “Battlegrounds,” which needed an engineering team to aid in the creation of an up-and-coming video game, Nivens said. PUBG operates a studio in Madison.

It’s common for several companies to have a hand in developing one video game, he explained. Lost Boys Interactive has until now mainly functioned then as a co-development studio to fill staffing gaps for clients.

Video game design is a complex and expensive process involving computer programmers, software engineers, graphic artists, animators, workers who play video games to test for glitches and more, he said.

Nivens said the studio — with Gearbox’s support — intends to act on a longtime goal: Develop internal video game ideas and projects.

A new norm?

Consolidation is likely becoming the norm for the video game industry, explained Madison Region Economic Partnership enterprise development director Craig Kettleson, who has researched the sector extensively.

Microsoft attempted its largest-ever acquisition of California-based game developer Activision Blizzard (parent company of Madison-area studio Raven Software) in early 2022, which was challenged last December by the Federal Trade Commission. That deal is worth almost $70 billion.

The FTC said in a December statement that the Activision deal could enable Microsoft “to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.”

Kettleson said he’s in favor of that deal, adding that it could theoretically bring more money and workers into the region, as well as elevate Madison as a destination for new game development studios. Nivens agreed with Kettleson’s sentiments in a separate interview.

“I think its good for the industry,” Nivens said. “When large corporations like that are spending large amount of money to consolidate, that raises all boats. The bigger and more studios you have, the more likely you are to create offshoots, forge new paths and create crazier (video) game ideas that the mainstream wouldn’t invest in.”

Microsoft already has ties to the area through Bethesda, a game-development studio that owns a location in the city. The tech giant bought Bethesda in 2020 for $7.5 billion.

Purchases of video games soared during the pandemic, so much so that analytics company Newzoo forecasted that in 2020 the sector would grow to $217.9 billion by this year.

Lockdowns lift

Newzoo has since released numbers showing that the video games market saw a slight decline in 2022 compared to 2021 — from $193 billion to $184 billion.

That was mainly because people spent less on mobile games in 2022 as “the world opened again after two years of lockdowns, and people’s disposable income became increasingly strained by inflation,” Newzoo said.

And Microsoft’s highly anticipated purchase of Activision comes not only with scrutiny by various government agencies, but as the overall tech industry faces layoffs. Microsoft announced it would layoff 10,000 employees, including some workers at Bethesda.