The GameJobHunter Blog – Video Game Jobs

Austin is next up in my series on local video game developer profiles, and it has more companies than any of the cities I’ve done so far.  I’ve actually tried to focus on less well-known hubs with previous profiles, but I figured it was time to hit one of the major cities.

As always, I’m using gamedevmap as a starting point.  I filter out anyone with a dead link,  and then dig around to see what other companies I can find that they don’t have.  Because the list is so long, I’m going to split this into 2 posts.  On to part 1…

Game Studios

• Arkane Studios – Arkane got its start in Lyon, France, and opened their Austin branch in 2006.  Their focus is “first-person immersive games with depth.”
• Armature Studios - Armature was founded by 3 Retro Studios veterans.
• Aspyr – Aspyr has worked on a large number of licensed and original titles over the years, and they’ve been involved with porting several titles to the Mac.
• Bioware Austin – The Austin division of Bioware has been hard at work on the upcoming Star Wars – The Old Republic title.
• Black Lantern Studios – Black Lantern is an independent developer with studios in both Austin and Springfield, MO.
• Blizzard Entertainment – The Austin office is a customer service center, and doesn’t actually handle any internal development.
• Certain Affinity – Founded by an ex-Bungie employee in 2006, Certain Affinity got their start working on new maps for Halo 2.  They’ve grown to 35 FT employees, according to their site.
• Challenge Games – Developers of Facebook titles, including a recently released 3D football game.
• Critical Mass Interactive – Contract developer who has worked on a variety of UE3 related projects.
• Edge of Reality – Looks like they recently wrapped up some work with Bioware on Dragon Age.  Nice!
• EA Pogo – One of the original casual game sites.
• Ghostfire Games – They’re working on an upcoming WiiWare title.
• Heatwave Interactive – New developer that received VC backing in 2008.  They’re working on an upcoming title called Platinum Life.
• Junction Point (Disney Interactive) – Warren Spector’s studio, and developers of the upcoming Epic Mickey title.  This Mickey Mouse reboot looks very cool.
• KingsIsle Entertainment – Creators of online titles, including their first release, Wizard 101.
• Semi Secret Software – I’m going out of order for now, but I found these guys while looking at Last Chance Media.  It looks like Last Chance is now part of Semi Secret – they released the awesome iPhone game Canabalt.
• Midnight Studios – not sure what they’re working on, but it looks like they moved into new office space in early 09.
• Mock Science – They’ve been helping out with some social network games lately.  A few of us at GJH used to work with one of the co-founders, so it’s great to see them achieving success.

That’s it for part 1 – I’ll get to work on part 2 some time in the very near future.  Stay tuned….

Filed under: Local Profiles