{"id":13591,"date":"2013-02-27T10:21:40","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T15:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=13591"},"modified":"2013-02-27T10:51:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T15:51:42","slug":"video-game-industry-could-keep-n-h-young-and-tech-savvy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2013\/02\/27\/video-game-industry-could-keep-n-h-young-and-tech-savvy\/","title":{"rendered":"How N.H.’s Budding Video Game Industry Is Getting Gobbled Up By Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Hampshire is attracting more young video game designers. The question is, can the state capture profits by keeping their companies in state? New Hampshire Public Radio’s Ryan Lessard<\/strong> has this story about young designers facing the allure of Boston:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Courtesy of Neal Laurenza<\/p>

Screen shot of pre-alpha version of Bacon Man. Certain assets like character design have yet to be added.<\/p><\/div>\u201cAll right, take the hand control. My suggestion is that you do what I do. You hold it up against your belly. Put your hand on the English nob. Forget the horizontal one. It will go just straight up and down because as a beginner you can\u2019t handle three controls.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re playing the original pong game on the very first game console. He thought up the idea of making dots move on a TV screen 1966 while working for a defense contractor in Nashua.<\/p>\n

Baer\u2019s\u00a0biggest legacy though, is helping create a video game industry that today has out-grossed Hollywood with a global revenue of $78.5 billion last year. New Hampshire\u2019s economy, however, has never managed to reap the benefits from his innovation.<\/p>\n

Though a new generation of video game developers could change that. Like with a game called Bacon Man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some bad guys that are some hamburgers and Bacon Man has a dash ability which is the whooshing sound that you keep hearing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Neal\u00a0Laurenza\u00a0is 22 years old. He recently graduated from Southern New Hampshire University and started a video game company called\u00a0Skymap\u00a0Games<\/a>. Bacon Man is his first game and it\u2019s still in the late stages of development.<\/p>\n

Laurenza\u00a0says crowd-funding, self-publishing, online distribution and increasingly affordable software, makes small, independent game studios increasingly viable.<\/p>\n

He also credits his training at\u00a0SNHU. In New Hampshire,\u00a0SNHU,\u00a0NHTI\u00a0and Daniel Webster College each offer game design and development programs. About a dozen students at each school are earning video game degrees this year. And the programs are growing every year. But many of those grads aren\u2019t staying in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a larger talent pool and more people engaged in conversation about game design in Massachusetts. So it\u2019s generally the place you\u00a0wanna\u00a0be if you\u2019re starting a game company right now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Laurenza\u00a0ended up moving his business to the Greater Boston area.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a shame says, Paul\u00a0Mailhot, the Vice President of Business Operations at\u00a0Dyn<\/a>\u00a0in Manchester. The company is one of the most established internet infrastructure businesses in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the largest challenge we have at the moment is just workforce,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says\u00a0Mailhot,\u00a0\u201cSpecifically what I\u2019m talking about there are computer software engineers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Not only is the university system not producing enough, but\u00a0Mailhot\u00a0says, things like limited infrastructure, and a relatively rural brand can make it a hard sell to convince them to resettle or stay in the Granite State.<\/p>\n

But those are challenges that some young video game developers are willing to take on. David\u00a0Carrigg\u00a0is the co-founder of\u00a0Retro Affect<\/a>, a video game company based in Meredith.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in central New Hampshire, right on Lake\u00a0Winnipesaukee, and then after college, essentially to minimize cost, I moved back up here to central New Hampshire.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Carrigg\u00a0and his partner, both in their\u00a020s, holed up in New Hampshire so they could work full time on their company with the support of their families. Last September, they finished their first game called Snapshot.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the game that we developed is a\u00a02D\u00a0puzzle\u00a0platformer\u00a0where you can take photographs of objects in the levels, capture them in the pictures and then paste the pictures back into the world and then have the objects fall back out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Carrigg\u00a0says that the game has already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.<\/p>\n

As their company grows in profitability,\u00a0Carrigg\u00a0says, they plan on moving it to the Boston area. Not because of tax incentives, internet access or investment, but because of the huge game design scene Boston already has.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as the community in New Hampshire goes, it\u2019s really, really lacking. The great thing about having a community and the support from other developers is it\u2019s a place to show off games that you\u2019re working on to other game-oriented minds who can look at it, pick it apart and give you advice and feedback and so forth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

At least 70% of the game development workforce is made up of 20 to\u00a030-somethings, according to the\u00a02010 Game Developer Salary Report<\/a>. That\u2019s exactly the age group where New Hampshire is forecasting a shortage of workers in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re promoting job openings and companies looking for interns and those sorts of things.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Kate\u00a0Luczko\u00a0is the Executive Director of\u00a0Stay Work Play<\/a>, a nonprofit tasked with retaining young people in the state.<\/p>\n

She says her group supports any efforts to keep game developers in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think it would take someone within that circle who really wanted it, had the passion to make it happen, to make it happen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

For his part, developer David\u00a0Carrigg\u00a0would love to see the state offer more help\u2014maybe build an incubator with office space. Or perhaps New Hampshire could start more simply, by making the \u201cBirthplace of Video Games\u201d part of its brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Hampshire is attracting more young video game designers. The question is, can the state capture profits by keeping their companies in state? New Hampshire Public Radio’s Ryan Lessard has this story about young designers facing the allure of Boston:\u00a0 New Hampshire is the birthplace of video games. No, really. Just ask 90-year-old Manchester resident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[473],"tags":[454,364],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13596,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions\/13596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}