Timing is everything! Early last week I sat down to work on my “work assignment” and put together the Boston Video Game Round-Up. What I did not know was that it would have been great timing to finish and post it last week to coincide with the mid-week Hiawatha Bray article on Boston .com covering the Boston video game space. I thought this would be a smaller list than my video and mobile round-ups. However, as I scoured the web, the list of Boston game companies just kept growing and growing and I had to push off finishing it.

The Boston.com article points out that Boston may not the be the powerhouse location of the industry but the number of game developers in the area is quite impressive and may lead to Boston being crowned the game development capital in the near future.

This list of 25 companies comprises entrants from the gaming space, our contribution to the virtual world and several game related companies. Even though I have spent a bit of time researching the economics of the virtual world, I will admit that my expertise is not in the pure online gaming space (outside of hours of Counter Strike, Stars Wars Battlefront and a former career playing online poker).

This is also by no means a complete group of all local companies. Special thanks go to Boston PostMortem, Waltham’s Zoominfo and, of course…Google who I used heavily to put the list together. If you interested in the space you should check out the PostMortem site and their complete list of local game companies.

Want a job in virtual worlds or video gaming? Just about all of these companies list jobs on their career pages. You can also check out Semper, the Boston-based staffing agency that has opened a division specifically focused on staffing all aspects of the industry.

Please let me know if I missed any companies that should be here.

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Harmonix Music Systems (Cambridge, MA): Are you a jukebox or Guitar Hero? Maker of the very popular Guitar Hero , the company was started by 2 MIT alums and focuses primarily on music based video games for multiple platforms. I have not picked up the game for my PS2 yet. They also produce game titles including Karaoke Revolution and Amplitude.

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Turbine Entertainment (Westwood, MA): Highland backed Turbine produces both the Dungeons and Dragons and the recently released subscription based Lord of the Rings 3D MMORG games. Their earlier claim to fame was the popular Asheron’s Call title.

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38studios (Maynard, MA): Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 studios is the much anticipated and publicized game operation from Red Sox pitcher Curt Chilling, Spawn creator Todd Mcfarlane and fantasy novelist R.A. Salvatore. The very “stealth” game is rumored to be an MMORPG ala Everquest but with a twist that could involve a serial novel concept. From their site - ” 38 Studios is redefining conventional multi-player gaming with the deployment of new game concepts, distribution methods, technologies and IP that have never been seen in the MMORPG space.

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ActiveWorlds (Newburyport, MA): Founded in 1995, this is one of the pioneers of the virtual world industry. The company produces numerous online virtual worlds where users create their own environments and even provides a license for it’s technology as well. Check out their futuristic version of Mars or their latest stock quote from the NASDAQ.

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Conduit Labs (Cambridge, MA): Founded by local entrepreneur Nabeel Hyatt of Ambient Devices fame, Conduit Labs just landed a nice round of funding from Charles River Ventures and Prism. The much anticipated gaming company is very stealth right now but is rumored to be developing a casual game meets MMOG type product that the founder promises to deliver soon.

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Worldwinner (Newton, MA): Want to play for real money online and not be gambling? Woldwinner hosts “skills-based” games between users including titles like Solitaire, Bejeweled 2, SCRABBLE, Cubes, Luxor and Cubis. Players compete against one another for real cash and prizes. This is no small operation the company boasts 30M+ registered and hosts more than 20Mtournaments every month.

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Ingeeni Studios (Cambridge, MA): “Artifical Intelligence in Your Browser Today” - Ingeeni is looking to build out the next-generation of AI (artificial intelligence) for gaming and virtual worlds. Ingeeni recently released the Borneo platform, a set of tools for companies to build out their own character portals. Just as cool as the technology is the involvement of Cynthia Breazeal, ScD. of MIT’s Kismet. fame on the companies management team. Check out their CreaturePark for a demo of the technology.

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Tilted Mill (Framingham, MA): Tilted Mill creates strategy, RPG and simulations for the PC and other gaming platforms. The company is currently producing a spin-off to the massive SimCity franchise called SimCity Societies. Their current titles include Ceasar IV and Children of the Nile.

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ImaginEngine (Framingham, MA): Part of Foundation 9 Entertainment (Emeryville, CA), ImaginEngine focuses on developing children’s titles and considers itself to be the largest independent game developer in North America. Although, I’m not sure that Chris Moneymaker’s World Poker Championship would be considered a childrens title in the same way that Blue’s Room: Blue Talks is listed?

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Iron Lore Entertainment (Maynard, MA): Iron Lore was founded by veteran game developer Brian Sullivan and successful entrepreneur Paul Chieffo. Brian is the co-creator of the epic game that even the causal gamer has heard of, Age of Empires. Now the company produces the PC games series TitanQuest.

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Floodgate Entertainment (Boston, MA): Founded by executives from the former Looking Glass Studios (pour out a bit of your 40 out for this defunct Boston game developer), FloodGate produces is a top mobile game developer and producer of titles like Daycare Nightmare, NASCAR 07, MoPets, Madden NFL 05, Madden NFL 06, Age of Empires and the multi-player Pirates of the Caribbean.

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Irrational Games / 2K Boston (Quincy, MA & Canberra, Australia): Irrational Games, another spawn from the old LookingGlass studios, was acquired in 2006 by Take Two (I am resisting a Rob Base joke right now) and was recently re-named 2K Boston. The company produces RPG games for the PC and console including the Bioshock title which won ‘Best of Show’ from IGN, GameSpot and GameSpy.

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DigitalBrix (Nashua, NH): I met founder Naveena Swamy at the last Webinno and was impressed by their “build your own game” flash technology. They have 2 products online right now including GameBrix, a community of creative people, and GBoss a web 2.0 browser based utility that enables community members to build simple flash games.

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Tri Synergy (Upton, MA): Founded by former Best Buy, CompUSA and Electronics Boutique executives, Tri Synergy provides an alternative publishing and distribution model for game developers. Where typically a developer will hand over the business side (PR, marketing, sales, etc.) to a publisher, Tri Synergy provides a turn-key way for developers to “self-publish” their titles.

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Blue Fang Games (Waltham, MA): An independent developer focused on creating “compelling, emotionally engaging games focused on the animal kingdom”. Blue Fang developed the Zoo Tycoon game title first released in 2001.

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Cecropia (Lexington, MA): Founded by ex-Papyrus Design Group co-founder Omar Khudari, Cecropia (a large, colorful moth) is looking to build a new part animated film, part video game concept. The project is animated by former Disney animators based in their Orlando office and combined with a game engine technology produced in Lexington. It sounds vaguely like the 80s arcade game Dragon’s Lair (also Disney animated).

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Windward Mark Interactive / Second Life Boston (Waltham, MA & Boston, MA): Now part of Second Life, Winward Mark was founded by Harvard students looking to make a play in the real-world visualization arena producing highly realistic 3D environments for games and simulations. The company produced a game titled Alliance, as well. You may have also noticed their introduction of realistic weather to Second Life. The entire team will join the Second Life Development office that was recently placed here to take advantage of our local talent.

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Demiurge Studios (Cambridge, MA) An independent video game development house and service provider. Demiurge has worked on over a dozen PC, console and online titles, including Brothers in Arms, Titan Quest, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

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Emagination Computer Camps (Woburn, MA): American Pie had band-camp, Boston has video game camp. Emagination Game Design operates a pre-college video game design school for teens ages 15-18. The Woburn based company provides a 14-day training camp teaching kids the ins-and-outs of video game development including tours of game development shops.

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Minerva / Cyberlore Studios (Northhapton, MA): Minerva operated until 2005 as Cyberlore Studios until it switched it’s focus to “serious games” and changed names to Minerva. As Cyberlore, they produced PC video games including titles such as MechWarrior, Might and Magic, Risk, and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. They also produced a title called Playboy: The Mansion. Minerva now uses it’s game technology for sales and customer support training.

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Creat Studios (Canton, MA): Creat produces a list of handheld and console games out of their Canton, MA office. Their title include Coded Arms (Konami), HotBrain and the very cool looking Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am for the PS2.

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Dragonfly Game Design (Westborough, MA): Dragonfly is a small game development shop that has produced games for Hasboro (Pawtucket, RI) and is often brought in by other development shops (including Demiurge) to work on game projects.

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Funkitron (Boxford, MA): Develops a list of downloadable “casual” video games for the PC. They are currently promoting the release of an 80s trivia game (with Boston-based board game company, Intellinitiative Game Co) featuring former MTV VJ Martha Quin as the spokesperson.

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Orbus Gameworks (Boston, MA): Is a very new start-up that is developing a gaming analytics service that allows game developers to track and analyze how their games are being used through a heat map technology - sounds very cool.

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Cambridge Interactive Development Corporation (Cambridge, MA): Hidden down by the Alewife T stop, CIDC considers itself more of a “software” company than a gaming company but one of it’s main outputs is the development of multi-player gaming title including online poker sites like Everest Poker.

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Technorati tags: Games, Video Games, Virtual Worlds, Online Games, MMORPG, Metaverse, Harmonix, Turbine, Turbine Entertainment, 38studios, Green Monster, ActiveWorlds, Conduit Labs, Conduit, Boston Web 2.0, Worldwinner, Orbus Gameworks, CIDC, Ingeeni Studios, Tilted Mill, ImaginEngine, Iron Lore Entertainment, Floodgate Entertainment, Irrational Games, 2K Boston, DigitalBrix, Tri Synergy, Blue Fang Games, Cecropia, Windward Mark Interactive, Second Life Boston, Demiurge Studios, Emagination, Minerva, Cyberlore Studios, Creat Studios, Funkitron, Casual Games

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StyleFeeder, an online social shopping site based in Cambridge, launched their new StyleFeeder Personal Shopper today. Available in beta at www.stylefeeder.com, this FireFox and IE plug-in (very soon to be released) brings much of the functionality of this local social shopping service right into a nice downloadable browser application. The sidebar (explorer bar in IE) is a piece of real estate that has not been used much lately but has been attempted many times before as a way to establish a more permanent place on the users desktop.

StyleFeeder is hoping that the launch of the Personal Shopping sidebar will put the “social” into social shopping and set them apart from other start-ups in the market including Kaboodle, Stylehive and others. This is great timing considering that Kaboodle was just picked-up for a rumored $30+ million!

For the web 2.0 geeks in the audience, the best way I can describe the overall StyleFeeder concept is that it is like a del.icio.us (social bookmarking) meets Lastfm (music recommendation) but for online shopping and style advice. For everyone else, it is a way to use the “wisdom of your buddies” to help you discover new things to buy online.

Users start by creating a shopping watch list by bookmarking and rating items they find on ecommerce sites. Once you have started building up your watch list and adding friends to your account, the service will start to recommend other “stuff you’ll like” based on a proprietary algorithm developed by the company. The service will also allow you to keep up with what your friends are interested in as well.

The StyleFeeder Personal Shopper sidebar is used to add a level of real-time interaction through live chat and another chat-style “shop with friends” feature that will allow you to team-up with another user to create a combined watch list. It also provides the ability to find “style twins”, or users that to have the same taste as you based on your combined watch lists. The later feature is particularly interesting because it allows the service to be as much about finding other people as things to buy.

Technorati tags: stylefeeder, boston web 2.0, social netwrorking, social media, blog

In last weeks round-up on the Boston online video space, I started off by stating that the video sector was one area where Boston was gaining significant traction. However, there is yet another sector that Boston has started to capture some serious “street cred” - Mobile.

The area is full of entrants into the mobile technology space including several high-profile acquisitions like m-Qube (now part of VeriSign) that have sprouted new entrants (Quattro for example). I also discovered another event series in the area that may turn into the mobile counterpart for the Webinno series, Mobile Mondays.

Here is a list of 28 local companies that are delivering innovative products and services in the Mobile space. For this list, I could have included the multi-platform plays from online video (Gotuit, Choicestream, etc.) but I wanted to focus on companies where mobile is their primary stated business. The list is a mix of both business and consumer focused offerings from small to large. It is a list of the Boston area brightest that are attempting to capitalize on that little screen we love to hold in our hands.

If I have missed anyone, and I am sure I have, please add a comment below.

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Quattro Wireless (Waltham, MA): Mobile publishing and advertising platform play launched in 2006 with a round of funding from top Highland Capital Partners. The company was founded by Andrew Miller and Eswar Priyadarshan 2 former m-Qube executives (acquired for a cool $250M last year).

m-Qube / VeriSign (Watertown, MA): m-Qube (now part of VeriSign) is a mobile channel enabler that helps companies, develop, deliver, and bill for mobile content, messaging and applications. They moved over $85M of wallpaper and ringtones in 2005 prior to their acquisition by Verisign last year for $250M!

enpcoket (Boston, MA): Founded in 2001, enpocket is a mobile marketing, personalization and advertising platform for the wireless space that has produced thousands of campaigns for top global brands They describe their service as the first mobile advertising platform that can predict and influence consumer behavior.

Third Screen Media (Boston, MA): Another in the list of “recently acquired, Third Screen Media created the the largest, single-source mobile ad network and a top web-based, mobile ad management and delivery platform. The company was acquired by AOL in May to become part of the Advertising.com group.

MobileLime/Modiv Media (Watertown & Quincy, MA): MobileLime, a VC-backed mobile marketing and promotional platform for retail, acquired Cuesol Inc.,a maker of in-store shopping software, for an undisclosed amount. The 2 will become Modiv Media soon.

Starent Networks (Tewksbury, MA): A rare public-company on the list, Starent is provider of the infrastructure used by mobile operators to provide multimedia services to their customers, such as video downloads or streaming, Internet access, voice-over-IP, e-mail, mobile TV, video and photo sharing, gaming, and others.

Groovemobile (Bedford, MA): Touted as “the world’s leading mobile music service”, Groove is one of the top local mobile plays with just about all of the major labels and carriers as partners. It provides a mobile download, peer-to-peer sharing, personalized music recommendations, and streaming radio service.

JumpTap (Cambridge, MA): Founded in 2005, Jumptap provides a a hosted, pure-mobile search solution for wireless carriers. The white-label service has customers including Alltel, Boost and Virgin Mobile. The company received a good size round of funding last October.

Everypoint (Boston, MA): Real-time mobile content and service delivery platform described as “infotainment” services. The companies who has investors including Venrock, Prism Venture Partners and TD Capital Ventures has had a recent change in CEO.

g8wave (Boston, MA): Local mobile marketing and promotions firm that assists in the planning, creation, and execution of mobile marketing campaigns, branded community applications and content distribution strategies.

Skyhook Wireless (Boston, MA): Another service that could go in a separate round-up, Skyhook uses the local WiFi networks to provide location-based services for mobile phones - very cutting edge technology sector that is going to explode soon. The company that landed $8.5M earlier this year also operates Loki.

Digit Wireless (Lexington, MA): Develops a new patented mobile phone keypad interface called Fastap. Interesting concept that I bumped into at a Red Herring event recently.

Nellymoser (Arlington, MA): Initially focused as ringtone and music marketing distribution play, Nellymoser recently morphed into a full mobile content delivery platform business with it’s IGN / Fox Interactive Deal last year. The company also lists Comedy Central, Billboard and VH1 on it’s customer roster.

Nextcode Corp (Concord, MA): Turn your mobile phone into a barcode scanner! Nextcode is pioneering new ways for mobile users to connect to content, commerce, and community applications by using the camera on select phones to read barcodes.

MoreMagic Solutions (Newton, MA): This company wins the award for the most inefficient corpo-babble on their homepage but it is a mobile payment play that that allows operators, content providers, and banks to offer consumers the ability to purchase goods and services on demand using a mobile phone.

Locomoda (Somerville, MA): Locamoda bridges the divide between the offline and mobile and fits is a great example of a location-based services play. Check out their digital graphiti site Wifiti.

iSkoot (Cambridge, MA): iSkoot raised $7M in February and is a way for Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger users make VoIP calls from over 20+ top mobile business phones. VoIP over mobile is a hot-button for the telco space and iSkoot no-doubt will make out well.

Utterz (Maynard, MA): Possibly one of my favorite local mobile startups, Utterz may also be the only startup that 93south broke. It is a side project for Foonz (which also has a mobile play as well) that allows users to share text and pics right from their phones. It’s Twitter…only better.

phling!: (Cambridge, MA): Produced by Oxy Systems, Phling! is a mobile social networking site that sounds a bit like LastFM for mobile, Users can listen to their mp3 collection on their mobile phone and let up to 6 friends in on the fun.

Buzzwire (Bedford, MA): Provides a streaming mobile media service, which lets users create their own customized audio and video programming channels for 3G mobile phones. Formerly known as 4th Media, the service just launched this week…shame on me for not covering it!

MocoSpace (Cambridge, MA): Mobile social networking service available for WAP enabled mobile phones. Think MySpace for your cell phone.

Mobicious (Needham, MA): Getting past the tough to remember play on Del.icio.us name, Mobicious.com is on online directory of all types of mobile content including videos, photos, ringtones, games and other applications. Check out the recent article on Mashable.

MStyle (Boston, MA): Mobile retail marketing platform that provides web and WAP storefronts, content delivery, custom campaigns, and direct-to-phone billing services. The company also operates mStyle.net - a consumer facing mobile content directory.

Pyxis Mobile (Waltham, MA): Provides mobile software for the financial services industry. Pyxis solutions are used by mobile financial professionals to pull business data from internal systems onto a mobile device.

Ulocate (Framingham, MA): Another location-based service provider that, according to their site provides a “mobile gateway for location across handset-based GPS systems, network-based triangulation and cell-tower location, and non-carrier location including IP-based, Wi-Fi, and component GPS devices”.

80108.com (Burlington, MA ??): 80108 is a mobile local event and info guide for a number of top US cities provide by a social media network of independent mobile correspondents who SMS text in insider tips on events, music and more for their given metros.

Mobleo (Chelmsford, MA): Mobleo is a free social bookmarking website for mobile devices that was launched in September of 2006. Mobleo.net also enables mobile phone access to a user’s bookmarks listed on other popular social bookmarking websites.

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UPDATE: Locomobile is now 80108, great catch REM.

Check out the Boston Mobile 2.0 Part Deux Round-Up

Technorati tags: Boston Mobile, Mobile 2.0, Wireless, Boston Web 2.0, Startups, 80108, ulocate, mobleo, utterz, m-qube, VeriSign, Starent, Digit Wireless, Locomedia, locomobile, foonz, choicestream, mobicious, Quattro Wireless, Quattro, enpocket, Third Screen, mobilime, everypoint, groovemobile, jumptap, g8wave, skyhook wireless, nextcode, nellymoser, iskoot, phling, buzzwire, mocospace, mstyle, pyxis, cell phone, video, social netwrorking

Boston has a new face of online gaming and virtual worlds and I should have included in my recent article about Second Life. Hiawatha Bray’s article posted on Boston.com today provided more information about the much anticipated game by Curt Schilling’s online game company 38studios, formerly known as Green Monster Games (Maynard, MA). Apparently, it will be a MMORPG ala World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings.

The company is comprised of 3 main principles from multiple industries including Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, New York Times best-selling fantasy author (and Leominster native!) R. A. Salvatore, and video game industry leader Brett Close.

The main issue that I see from the article is the expected release date of the game - 2010! That’s an eternity in the online world. The company is planning on releasing additional products outside of the game but to think that far in advance the creators may need to be more than just visionary’s, they’ll have to be fortune tellers.

The company plans on releasing some early concept art at the show. I’ll keep an eye on 38pitches blog and the Gamebunny blog who is promising and update from the Comic-Con in San Diego show soon.

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Technorati tags: online games, virtual worlds, wow, world of warcraft, 38studios, curt schilling, boston web 2.0, boston, maynard, web 2.0, gamers, spawn