Update – this page gets a lot of visits, so I wanted to point people towards our more recent lists of game companies by city. Check out this page – video game cities.
I was looking through the site http://www.gamedevmap.com earlier, and it had me wondering – which North American cities had the largest concentration of companies involved with video game development?I’m sure there’s more accurate information available somewhere online, but I didn’t let that stop me from putting together this highly unscientific list.It would be interesting to track which cities rise and fall on the list over time, so I’ll probably come back to this a few times a year to see how things are shaking out. (*Edit – since writing this post, I’ve started putting together local game industry profiles)
Disclaimer – to put the list together, I simply clicked on the cities that I knew to have a decent grouping of developers, and jotted down the number that Gamedevmap had listed for that city.Each city also includes surrounding suburbs, so Seattle actually includes Redmond, Bellevue, etc. They list companies that fit the following categories – Developer, Publisher, Developer&Publisher, Organization, Mobile/Handheld, Online Developer.I didn’t subtract things like IGDA chapters or check to make sure all of the developers were still in business.Also be aware that Gamedevmap relies on its users to submit entries, so the list is anything but comprehensive.That being said, it’s a nice sampling and is interesting to take a look at.Just take it with a grain of salt.
First, I’ll give you a minute to mentally arrange your top 5 or so.I had the top 5 cities right, but I only had 1 in the right spot.I’ll distract you with this image so you can think without seeing the list:
www.gamedevmap.com
Ok, on to the list. I’ve got the top 15, and we’ll count down from 15 to 1. The number on the right is the actual number of companies in that city.
15. Salt Lake City – 14
14. Atlanta – 16
13. Dallas – 17
12. Washington DC – 18
11. San Diego – 20
10. Montreal – 23
09. Chicago – 25
08. Toronto – 28
07. New York City – 40
05 (t). Boston – 41
05 (t). Austin – 41
04. Vancouver – 44
03. Seattle – 70
02. San Francisco – 100
01. Los Angeles – 104
I had LA 3rd on my list, so I was shocked to see it at number 1. What do you think – did I pull a boneheaded move and miss anyone? Any major surprises? Other cities that were close were Raleigh, Denver, Phoenix and Eugene, to name a few.