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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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

I was reading a recent top article on Boston.com about the plans for the City of Boston and Emerson College to bring the hub into the Second Life universe and it made me think about how far will these virtual world technologies will take us and where will real world Boston fit in?

Here is a test. In your minds eye, quickly create a picture of the typical Second Life daily user looks like in real life? Does a creepy basement in their parents house come to mind…do you think something seedy? That may be the picture that you have now but with many major companies and thought leaders looking to virtual world technologies as “the new, new media” that picture may morph quickly into a picture of yourself in the future.

Boston city officials are, according to the article, hoping that the novelty of Second Life will inspire people to take a more active part in civic life, help virtually imagine how they can improve the city and maybe even interact with the city offices in the future. They plan on building out parts of the city in Second Life as part of a joint project with Emerson College students who will handle the virtual construction. This is all part of a course that Emerson is offering called Hub2 that will be taught by Emerson professor Eric Gordon, who will run the course for Emerson students, and Harvard’s Gene Koo, who will teach the “open class” for non-students.

Other examples of brands and city governments experimental efforts in the virtual world;

• Sweden recently opened the first virtual embassy in Second Life. It’s is more or a visitor center, I do not think you can apply for a visa there and for Swede’s looking to renew your visa…I do not think this counts as “leaving the country” to renew your current visa.
• The Vancouver Police Department has begun recruiting for Police on Second Life
• Second Life developer Second Promotion and other teams have started building out virtual versions of major European cities including Salzburg, Munich, Manchester and Amsterdam
• Manpower and several other recruiters have opened islands to start virtual recruiting for real world jobs
• A company called Unisfair has launched to help real business run virtual tradeshows and corporate events for fortune 500 companies

As for the local virtual scene? The Boston world already has a decent footing the building of the virtual sphere. Active Worlds, hidden up in Newburyport, MA, is one of the grand-daddy’s of the space is that was started in 1995 and launched in 1997. They have quietly built out their own virtual world as well offering a license their technology for commercial or educational use. You can also include MMORPG (not sure if I can ever get that acronym right) game providers like Westwood-based Turbine who recently released The Lord of Rings Online which looks incredible but I refuse to get sucked in (I’m just too busy and I know it will kill hours of my time).

In addition, Second Life recently acquired Waltham-based Windward Mark Interactive to help enhance their 3D capabilities. The team from Windmark will join the also recently created Linden Software Development office in Cambridge, MA. [ Update: Thanks to Pathfinder Linden for pointing out that the recruitng party I had linked to here was for a party in the UK next week!...my bad! the Boston event was awhile back. ]

The interesting story on Second Life, outside of the local scene of course, is the debate over how “active” the popular online destination really is anyway and if it con be considered a viable marketing program. Second Life has captured almost 8 Million registrations in the pas 4 years but only, according to the debate, (a.) 40 - 50,000 active users or (b.) 500,000 active users. Just so you know (and would like to quote either of these in a meeting to make yourself feel cool), these are referring to 2 different numbers and the point is really moot anyway. The lower number is quote from the a Forrester analyst posted in recent L.A. Times article and is referring to a “peak usage” number or the number of users who are logged in at any give time. The later is an “active weekly user” number as reported by a recent GigaOm article where “active” is defined as users who have logged in the past 7 days. The number that I would like to investigate is user engagement or what avatars are actively involved in on a regular basis.

Marketers for the past year or 2 have been clamoring to build out a presence in this and other popular online worlds with very mixed results ( also read the release on Second Life customer satisfaction ) However, it is probably too soon to really use this platform as a viable line item in your overall marketing plan because the “world” is just not that large anyway. If you can think of some clever gimmick (like a virtual version of your city!) you can get good press and awareness externally for your message but do not expect the Second Life minions to embrace you or your product because you “care” about their world. You may even end up on the wrong end of the Second Life Liberation Army if you are not careful (I’ve tried to join with no success but the SLA is more hype/humor than reality anyway). Do they issue invites like Pownce?

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Technorati tags: Second Life, Boston, Boston Web 2.0, Blog, Blogs, Linden Labs, Avatar, Virtual Worlds, Emerson, Active Worlds, Marketing, Online Worlds, Interactive, Jobs, Social Media, web 2.0, Turbine, Lord of the Rings