The North American Game Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 88

Many states in North America of er various subsidies, in the form of tax
incentives, for entertainment industries. Some specifi cally of er incentives
for game development companies (Kocieniewski 2011). Although these are
not direct subsidies, but rather tax incentives, the goal is often to lure large
game developers or publishers to relocate or form new oi ces in a given
location. Many states use it as a means to encourage job growth in high-
tech sectors, like the game industry. However, because these incentives
often impose threshold limits, which require a project of a certain scale
($500,000.00 per project is common), it means that rarely are small devel-
opers able to benefi t from the incentives until they have already become
successful and grow large enough to support projects of that size. Thus,
although these incentives are helpful for established game companies, their
focus on large established development studios and publishers limits their
overall ef ectiveness (Pearson 2011).
RISE OF THE “INDIE”
In recent years, there has been a surge in “indie” game development. This
has been largely distinguished from even “independent game studios,” as
indie games are largely produced by small teams of developers or even indi-
viduals working on relatively small projects that aim to push the envelope
of game design (Martin and Deuze 2009). Indie game development has
been further enabled by the rise in digital distribution, particularly on plat-
forms like Steam, iOS and Android. Games successful in one space may
fi nd the developers capable of af ording a console DevKit, enabling them to
bring future games to the more closed consoles.
Indie game development is far from a purely North American phenom-
enon, with many of the ideas and rapid development and prototyping men-
talities drawing heavily on the indie game development community in the
Nordic countries. Indie games also maintain a strong link to Game Studies
academics both in North America and throughout Western Europe.
Because indie games often strive to accomplish a relatively small number
of clear design or aesthetic goals, the games are capable of being produced
at a much smaller scale than the typical game development studio works at.
Digital distribution enables developers to then see more of the revenue from
those games and move from game title to game title.
THE VIDEO GAME “PUBLISHER”
North America is home to several of the major publishing companies in the
world. Electronic Arts (EA), Activision/Blizzard, Take Two, Bethesda Soft-
works, THQ and Microsoft are all headquartered in North America. It is
for this reason, that North America remains one of the largest producers of