Is the world really flat when it comes to making games?

What are the ingredients necessary to turn a region into a hub for great game development? That’s a good question, and it’s an economic gold mine for any region that figures it out since games have become a $90 billion industry, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital.

That question isn’t so different from why Silicon Valley became a great hub for technology. AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, studied that question way back in 1994 in her book Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. She noted that Silicon Valley beat out Boston as a tech region in part because it embraced a better business model. While Route 128’s corporations in Massachusetts were vertically integrated computer companies such as Digital Equipment Corp., Silicon Valley had more startups that embraced a horizontal model, where each startup (such as Intel) made a different piece of the product stack. That turned out to be in the winning strategy in the emerging PC era.