The DeanBeat: Using creativity to determine your own destiny in games

In the past week, I combed the San Francisco Bay Area to find the most inspiring game developers. I went from Cupertino to Novato, from San Francisco to Berkeley, seemingly on a random journey from one meeting to the next. But I came away astounded at the creativity that I found. I’ve been obsessed with this subject of creativity and diversity for a while, and I was pleased to see everyone I met in the region so awash in creativity and optimism.

This region is among the most expensive places in the world to develop games. Yet it is populated by a disproportionate number of game developers and studios, big and small, just like the tech industry is over-represented in Silicon Valley. You can make games much more cheaply in other locations, and many companies do. The world is flat when it comes to video game development. But, like in Finland, Canada, and Japan, there’s something in the water in the Bay Area that makes people bold and inspired to create the best games they can possibly make. They believe their creations can overcome the forces of economic change, industry cycles, consumer fatigue, and other tides that make survival tough and constant struggle a must.