The San Francisco Bay Area is arguably the epicenter of the game development universe. This number of game studios and jobs in the Bay area is large (and constantly fluctuating), and it includes studios that do just about every type of game development imaginable. AAA development? Localization of obscure Japanese titles? Hardcore social games? Educational mobile apps? Major industry conferences? All of the above, and that barely scratches the surface. If something is happening in the games industry, you can bet that it’s happening in some way, shape or form in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area includes a few major cities and several smaller towns. For the purposes of this list, it stretches from about Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa.