Electronic Arts Acquires Playfish
The State of Louisiana's economic development department has been trying to persuade Electronic Arts to relocate to or open a new game design studio in Louisiana. EA has already located a game testing center at Louisiana State University, and the state would like to expand EA's presence. Louisiana's digital media tax incentives program was originally focused on attracting game development companies to Louisiana like EA.
Unfortunately, the slow down of the national economy has worked against Louisiana's efforts as EA has seen its own business difficulties during the past year.
Nevertheless if the State of Louisiana wants to remain attuned to EA's vision of the future of video game development, the State should note that EA has just announced its intention to purchase Playfish, a social game company. See the San Francisco Chronicle article on November 10, 2009 entitled, EA buying Playfish in $300 million deal.
If you are not familiar with social games that have grown out of platforms like Facebook, I found a pretty good definition of social games and also a good list of social game developers on The Social Times Blog in an entry entitled, "What are social games?".
The various economic development arms of Louisiana and its cities should consider efforts to attract social game developers to Louisiana. If they are successful, they might find that EA is not far behind.
