For decades, North Carolina’s Research Triangle has offered an East Coast hub for tech development. One of the biggest industries that has long gravitated to the Triangle of Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh since the turn of the millennium has been video gaming. Naturally, there are many gamers in the state, but it’s the presence of major studios that has helped to keep NC firmly entrenched in the entertainment medium.
It has also bolstered accompanying lines of business, such as office deals in the state ranking among the priciest, as we reported here at CharlotteStories. Raleigh, Durham, and Research Triangle Park all landed entries in the top 50 priciest US office deals, showcasing the draw of the area to major companies. Still, with the global games industry already reportedly generating revenues of over $187 billion, there’s plenty of competition around.
North Carolina remains a gaming hub for the global industry
We can trace the early embers of video gaming making a home in North Carolina back to the 2000s. At a time when World of Warcraft was closing in on its peak popularity, the Xbox 360 was giving the PlayStation 3 a run for its money, our grandparents became gamers thanks to the Wii, and Angry Birds was just about to be released as a premium title, an opportunity was seen to entrench the Research Triangle in the surging industry. This came in the form of 2009’s Triangle Game Conference, as reported by GameDeveloper at the time, which sought to emulate GDC Austin, which cemented the city as a video gaming in its own right.
At the time, 30 game development companies had already bundled into the Triangle, including still-major players Unreal, with the likes of Epic Games, Insomniac Games, and Electronic Arts ready to join. To this day, the area is home to Ubisoft, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Red Storm Entertainment, Insomniac Games, Pocket Gems, BioWare, and many, many others. Of course, with the adjustments required across tech following a foolhardy approach of assumed continued growth in the extreme circumstances of the start of the decade, NC has seen some adverse effects of being such a gaming hub.
Epic Games, for example, hit headlines in late September for needing to cut 16 percent of its staff. Epic Games has a hefty presence in the Tar Heel State, but the company is offering support to help get those let go get employed elsewhere. Such an approach won’t help those at Puny Human, though. The 16-year-old studio announced its closure in October due to a client not paying up for services provided. On the bright side, next-gen tech grants have continued to find gaming teams in NC, including Smart Girls HQ ($75,000) and Prevention Strategies, LLC ($75,000). The state remains a major source of game development, but big moves are being made to the north.
Canada picking up steam in the gaming industry
In recent years, global companies have been investing big in the Canadian gaming market, both as a place to sell gaming and develop games. While companies like BioWare were founded in Canada, it’s the likes of Netmarble (Korea Republic), Embracer Group (Sweden), Sony (Japan), and Ubisoft (France) investing and acquiring in the country that have been making headlines of late. Showcasing its openness to all forms of gaming entertainment, which has certainly helped Canada as a place to invest and grow, Ontario has even welcomed one of the newest forms of the medium in North America, while North Carolina has not.
Over the last several months, Ontario has firmly entrenched itself in the iGaming industry. While online casinos are available across Canada, as listed and ranked by casinobonusca, it’s in Ontario where they’ve thrived. Being a huge market, it was always expected to succeed under a good regulatory body, but it’s even tapped into the love of video games in the country. The Hugo and Lara Croft slots at the top three platforms show exactly this. Adding to the gaming scene, of course, are the 100+ studios ranging from Pixel By Pixel to Zynga.
North Carolina doesn’t look set to accompany Ontario in the newest form of online gaming anytime soon, but it still boasts an almighty footprint in the video gaming industry. The Canadian scene is seeing a tremendous amount of investment, but it’d take an immense effort to unseat NC’s place in the gaming.
