April 30, 2009
By Monica Chen
http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/business/21-1148907.cfm?
RALEIGH -- Nearly 300 people crammed into a lecture hall, three and four-person deep in the standing room, to listen to Michael Capps speak at the inaugural Triangle Game Conference Wednesday.
Capps, president of Epic Games, gave a rundown of the culture and strategies that his company has employed to build Gears of War and its sequel, arguably the biggest blockbuster video game produced out of the Triangle to date.
With his casual manner and easygoing sense of humor, Capps elicited enthusiastic laughter from the mix of game developers and students with even his subject headings.
"Tarydium handcuffs," about the unique problem of having too low of an employee turnover rate. "Play sexy video," for the link to play the Gears of War "Mad World" trailer.
"We always want to find the fun in the work," Capps said.
Fitting remarks to kick off the inaugural Triangle Game Conference. About 600 people were registered to attend, well surpassing organizers' expectations of around 400.
The event is just one sign of a maturing industry. The Triangle is now home to the fifth-largest game-companies cluster in the country, with more than 30 companies and roughly 1,000 workers.
"Five years ago, there were probably just a couple job openings in two companies," Capps said. "But now people are staying, and this cluster is really growing."
"The old joke is that all it takes to be an overnight success is 10 years of work," said Alexander Macris, president of Themis Group in Durham and director of the conference.
Macris said that seeds of the industry were sowed with cutting-edge computer graphics programs at N.C. State University and UNC Chapel Hill and companies that have stayed in the area and spun off into new ones.
"All throughout these decades, there were these infrastructures built for graphics and technology in the Triangle," he added. "None of those companies have really left. They've been building and building for years. Right now, the Triangle is the game engine capital of the world."
Epic's Unreal Engines, used to build the Gears of War games, is at the forefront of the game engine producers along with Emergent Game Technologies in Chapel Hill and Vicious Cycle. The Unreal platform is also used by Virtual Heroes, a serious games developer in Durham.
Serious games, used to train medical workers and others through simulations and game strategies, are also expected to be a focus of Triangle game companies in the years to come, riding on the benefits of proximity to medical centers and universities in the Triangle and the military not far away in Fayetteville.
"We're the unquestioned leader in serious games," Macris said.
One accelerant to the industry that's missing: Tax incentives. When one audience member after Capps' speech asked him how the industry could be grown locally, Capps noted that Montreal heavily recruits companies by offering 30 percent tax credits.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, there has been talk of banning violent video games.
"That felt like, 'Oh, we don't want your kind here,'" Capps said.
Another accelerant of the industry: more university programs that could provide an adequate pool of workers.
Many of the students who came to the conference Wednesday were from Wake Technical Community College's Simulation and Game Development program.
Chris Martin, a freshman in the two-year program, volunteered for the event and said he hopes to be a programmer for one of the Triangle-based companies when he graduates. After that, he said he would like to set up his own gaming company someday.
The local industry is growing fast, Martin said.
"I think in a decade from now, we'll think back on this and feel it was so small," he said. "The only way from here on out, is out."
The conference continues at the Raleigh Marriott City Center today with Peter Tamte, president of Raleigh-based Atomic Games, speaking on forces reshaping the industry.
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