Forums > News > "Videogame City" in Portugal
Luis Silva (13443) on 9/28/2006 1:57 PM · Permalink · Report
A group of investors is planning on creating a "Hollywood" of video games in the remote city of Portalegre, Portugal. The idea is to attract all national developers into a single place with the hope of establishing an industry in this country, with an history that includes at best five commercial titles, with the exception of mobile phone titles.
Historically, most developing teams come from only an handfull of countries (USA, Canada, Japan, UK, France and Germany). Would a more varied roll call of developers increase the variety of games, or most of them are already conditioned by their previous experiences, and wouldn't do anything new or groundbreaking? Other thing that has to be questioned is if the market nowadays is too hard and expensive to break into when compared to the times most modern developers were established. Times when two people could develop top selling games all by themselves in a few sleepless nights are long gone, and remain only as a dream of indy developers. Could XNA bring a bit of those years back?
Игги Друге (46653) on 9/28/2006 2:13 PM · Permalink · Report
Would a more varied roll call of developers increase the variety of games, or most of them are already conditioned by their previous experiences, and wouldn't do anything new or groundbreaking?
While the quality is not bad, there's nothing groundbreaking about Scandinavian games, that made a relatively late entrance to the world market. Most things look and play like American games, to the point that you wouldn't ever guess they weren't American in the first place.
Matt Neuteboom (976) on 9/29/2006 2:19 AM · Permalink · Report
A Holywood for video games would definitely make sense. I mean, did't the video game industry surpass the movie industry a while ago?
bricewgilbert (173) on 9/30/2006 7:12 PM · Permalink · Report
Like i've said before the top games only sell that much because you have a huge amount of people who play only 1 or 2 game titles a year. The Madden people and the GTA people. Its gonna take another 30 or so years for the videogame industry to really get up into the hollywood numbers consistantly.
But anyways. A videogame hollywood? Bleh thats just not going to happen the way that people think. The only thing close to it is Seattle and its suberbs where you have Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, Sucker Punch, Zipper, Monolith, Sierra among others. Then you have California which has lots of studios spread around in Los Angeles, San Diego etc. Canada as well has some great dev studios spread around.
So my point is that the videogame industry is different. unlike films. Games can cross oceans and cultures with ease. When films are dubbed or subbed something is lost. Or people just don't want to watch them. Videogames are a lot different. There will be the major places that have videogame studios. Like right now in the US you have Washington, California and Texas as the major locations. But there won't be that one place like Hollywood where all the execs hang out and where the studios are actually located. Plus Hollywood happened in a time that was much less worldwide. Now with the global market there is no need to do that. Oh and hollywood came about because of the weather. Videogame developers don't really worry about weather that much. They don't need sun 24/7 to make games.
Игги Друге (46653) on 9/30/2006 10:10 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Cartman86 wrote--]Canada as well has some great dev studios spread around. [/Q --end Cartman86 wrote--] Canada is the second largest country in the world. Spreading things around in Canada is like spreading them around in outer space, the distances are astronomical.
Matt Neuteboom (976) on 9/30/2006 8:03 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Hmm interesting article. Never really knew that.
Oh yes, and the article is mainly about a video game city in Potugal, if I remember. I think it was only to increase the video game business for that country, not really to create some sort of Mecca for gamers or anything.