In the letter to shareholders heard ‘round the entertainment world, Netflix famously admitted that it competes with — and loses to — the popular video game Fortnite more than HBO. And while the gargantuan success of that Epic Games blockbuster surely remains an outlier, the subtext is unmistakable: In the knock-down, drag-out competition for users’ screen time, the video gaming industry is booming where yesterday’s entertainment forerunners are lagging, if not outright busting.
The video game industry reported $60.4 billion in revenue for 2021, which was up 8 percent compared to the previous year, according to data released by market research company The NPD Group. The gaming industry owes some of that success to its adaptation of tech breakthroughs and its discovery of new business strategies — both of which are also generated internally.
To get an idea of who’s doing what in an industry that seems to be in perpetual flux, check out these gaming industry innovators.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
The Pokémon Company International, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company based in Japan, is primarily responsible for managing aspects of the Pokémon brand, its licensing and its marketing in regions outside of Asia. That includes news, updates and additional information for the brand’s many video games, from Pokemon GO on mobile to Pokemon Snap for Nintendo Switch. The company also handles all aspects of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, the brand’s animated television series, its website and more.
Location: Long Beach, California
Zwift is an indoor cycling app that brings better experiences and engagement to home workouts, allowing riders to explore digitized locations from throughout the world while excelling in their workout. The app features workouts and training plans designed by expert coaches, a massive community of users helping keep each other motivated and sprawling landscapes that seamlessly bridge the gap between a workout and playing a video game.
Location: Los Angeles, California
PlayVS is eliminating boundaries into the eSports landscape and creating new opportunities for high school and collegiate eSports players to compete for state championships and become recognized athletes by their state association. Managing two seasons of league play per year with playoff competitions immediately following, PlayVS has partnerships with state and province associations in the United States and Canada and is actively building out both its platform and community to deliver better eSports opportunities to players at a greater scale.
Location: Sherman Oaks, California
Mythical Games is a team of veteran game and platform developers working together to bring groundbreaking new ideas to market and enhance the gameplay experience. The company is dedicated to playing a part in creating an integrated secondary market built on true ownership of digital assets to bring players, developers and content creators closer together. Mythical Games has been integral in the development of franchises like Blankos: Block Party, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft.
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Location: Los Angeles, California
Supernatural provides a groundbreaking home workout experience for those who love gaming and those looking for more than what traditional exercise can provide. The fully immersive VR platform allows users to engage with life-like virtual locations such as Iceland’s glaciers, Ethopian volcanoes and the ruins of Machu Picchu. It comes with meditations and workouts targeting multiple muscle groups included within the subscription. Supernatural is available via the Oculus Quest Headset.
Location: Irvine, California
MobilityWare specializes in developing tremendously replayable games for mobile devices and Facebook. The company’s impressive roster of games includes Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Jigsaw Puzzle and Video Poker, providing users with hours of entertainment without any learning curve.
Location: San Francisco, California
It’s not a gaming company per se, but few outfits are as inextricable from the gaming landscape as streaming platform Twitch. The go-to broadcasting choice for the e-sports community and other gamers, the video platform-meets-social community was acquired by Amazon in 2014 and (per the company) attracts more than 10 million monthly visitors.
Location: Redwood City, California
One of the industry’s true powerhouses, EA is proof that quality and quantity need not be mutually exclusive. The EA Sports division is responsible for some of the most iconic sports-games franchises, including FIFA, Madden NFL and NBA Live. EA’s classic non-sports series range from The Sims to Medal of Honor, and its Mobile subsidiary does a reliably good job of putting those hits in your pocket.
Location: New York, New York
This veteran gaming company is one of the most recognizable names in the industry. Take-Two Interactive Software’s two divisions, Rockstar Games and 2K, are responsible for some certified cultural phenomena, including the former’s infamous Grand Theft Auto and the latter’s NBA 2K. Blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2 is emblematic of the company’s rigorous attention to graphic and motion detail.
Location: New York, New York
Private Division is a game publishing company that advocates for small game developers, providing them with opportunities to successful launch games commercially and globally. Some titles published by Private Division include OlliOlli World from Roll7 and Disintegration from V1 Interactive.
Location: Seattle, Washington
DoubleDown Interactive makes classic casino games — everything from blackjack and slots to poker and roulette — for social and mobile platforms. The company started out with the launch of a casino game on Facebook in 2010, and by 2015, was among the top-performing games in the Apple App Store.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Most famous perhaps for massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard also scores highly in digital collectible card games (Hearthstone), first-person shooters (Overwatch) and other genres. They’re also celebrated for some of the most memorable April Fools’ Day pranks in the industry and—get this—handing out steins, shields, swords and helms as service awards.
Location: Culver City, California
Jam City has produced game adaptations of massively popular tentpole franchises, including Harry Potter and Marvel Avengers titles. They also inked a multi-year deal with Disney to develop games. The developer — which counts the creators of MySpace and a former 20th Century Fox executive among its co-founders — has proven to be a major leader, particularly in the free-to-play social and mobile categories.
Location: San Francisco, California
Glu, acquired by EA in 2021, has created some of the most popular interactive mobile games of the last decade. The mobile gaming stalwart is behind smash hits like, Diner Dash, Design Home, Tap Sports MLB Baseball ‘20, and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, which have collectively wracked up billions of downloads from gamers worldwide.
Location: Frisco, Texas
After leveraging success from Half-Life expansion packs into their own hit franchises Brothers in Arms and Borderlands, Gearbox, part of Embracer Group, has not only navigated the ever-shifting waters of the gaming industry for 20-plus years, they’ve remained forward-thinking. Case in point: the impressively complex 2016 first-person shooter Battleborn.
Location: Cary, North Carolina
As the monoculture continues to fragment, we may never see another Pac-Man-style capital-P phenomenon, but the long-tail success of Fortnite has come awfully close. Separate from that mammoth success, Epic Games — which dates back well beyond the internet era — is looking toward the future with projects like Unreal Engine, a product development suite that includes hyper-realistic design renderings that also have automotive applications.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Started by a trio of former Blizzard programmers, this long-running outfit is known for massively-multiplayer-online successes like Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. ArenaNet, a subsidiary of NCSOFT, is also known for incorporating the increasingly popular episodic-update model.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Bungie has grown from self-described “creepy one bedroom apartment” origins to become worthy of a famous scoop-up by Microsoft. The major tech company acquired Bungie in 2000 and launched the Xbox console with the studio’s mega-hit Halo: Combat Evolved. In the span of just a few years, Bungie left Microsoft, then split from a subsequent Activision partnership and returned to its independent roots.
Location: Redmond, Washington
Nintendo is known both for its games and gaming consoles. With roots dating as far back as the late 1800s, the company first debuted its famous characters Mario and Donkey Kong nearly 100 years later in the 1980s. There are now thousands of titles users can play on Nintendo Switch, including popular Nintendo published games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Location: San Francisco, California
Founded in the 1980s, Ubisoft has released popular gaming franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Rabbids. Xbox and Nintendo Switch are among the platforms where Ubisoft games can be played. The company’s areas of technological expertise include artificial intelligence and cloud gaming.
Location: Paris, France
Gameloft has 190 games in its portfolio with 1.5 million downloads completed daily. For two decades, the company has been developing games for mobile, PC and gaming consoles. Gameloft is known for titles like The Oregon Trail and Dragon Mania Legends.
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Location: Austin, Texas
Owlchemy Labs has developed a number of popular virtual reality games focused on incorporating hand movements into the gaming experience, including Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. The company was acquired in 2017 by Google, which has made use of Owlchemy Labs’s touch interaction technology within its own products.
Location: Fully Remote
Exploring mixed reality and advanced gaming technology, Stage11 is bringing an unprecedented dimension to the music industry. The company is working to enhance fans’ experiences by weaving together narratives, virtual worlds and avatars. In addition, people will be able to trade NFT items, connecting audiences even more to the artists they’ve come to know and love.
Location: Irvine, California
Bonfire Studios emerged from stealth in late 2016 after raising $25 million to build a highly anticipated title. The company is staffed with artists, level designers, character developers, animators, UX designers, VFX artists, developers and more, all bringing unique talents to the team with a goal of uniting players in a sense of adventure, exploration and fellowship.
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
According to its website, Raven Software’s decision to stay rooted in the gaming-industry flyover country of Wisconsin was a conscious choice — one that comes with notable cost-of-living and community perks. As for its game portfolio, highlights include Heretic/Hexen and Soldier of Fortune. It has also notably lent assistance to fellow Activision partners Treyarch and Infinity Ward on Call of Duty entries.
Location: Culver City, California
A leading mobile-gaming company with strong ties to Hollywood, Scopely works with in-house developers and external studios from around the world. The fast-growing company, which is responsible for hits like Star Trek Fleet Command and Looney Tunes World of Mayhem, takes pride in its diversity of approaches, moving beyond casual gaming into role-playing and strategy games.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Play Q is an on-the-rise mobile gaming developer. The company rioritizes easy-to-grasp gameplay, colorful graphics, fit-for-all-ages narratives and just-so degrees of familiarity — think puzzles and platforms.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Years before the great Pokémon GO scare of 2016, this geocaching pioneer was already getting gamers outside and GPS-scavenging for treasure. Geocaching has also nurtured a robust network of forums, events and even environmental outreach, encouraging responsible play.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Naughty Dog started in a garage in the late 1980s and eventually grew to become one of the premier American gaming companies, thanks to watershed series like Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter and Uncharted. The company emphasizes cross-studio collaboration between programmers, developers and designers, retaining an indie-style culture while producing award-winning blue chip titles.
Location: San Francisco, California
Zynga has produced many of the most popular social mobile games of all time, with titles including Words With Friends, Farmville and Tiny Royale. The company’s games have been played by over 1 billion users, leading to offices opening throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India.
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Location: Golden, Colorado
Co-founded by music industry veterans, IllFonic has grown into a leading indie game developer, making its name on tactical titles like Armored Warfare and horror survival games like Friday the 13th: The Game. The company takes strides to maintain an independent spirit even as it continues to grow, and it carefully plans projects with an eye toward the long term, according to top brass.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Led by their ever-popular and evergreen Nancy Drew series that has connected across multiple generations, Her Interactive makes games for girls with budding inner sleuths. Her helped shatter the canard that computer games were just for boys, and has carried the loyalty it’s developed over the decades into the contemporary gaming environment, expanding beyond the desktop.
Location: Fully Remote
Casinos, sports leagues and media companies partner with Boom Entertainment to elevate online gaming. Boom Entertainment builds technology centered around affiliate marketing, user analytics, intuitive designs and multimedia content. To date, the company has worked on several games including Goose the Gold and Galactic Fruit Frenzy.
Location: Burbank, California
The creative force behind Spider-Man, one of the industry’s mega-successes, Insomniac Games earned its name on PlayStation exclusives like Ratchet & Clank and Spyro the Dragon. This gaming company is one of the true major American players in gaming.
Location: San Francisco, California
N3TWORK did gangbusters business on its own with Legendary: Game of Heroes. Then the company parlayed those winnings into an ambitious new arena: allowing third-party developers access to the studio’s best practices in applications ranging from ad creative development to continued campaign optimization—a sign that a company’s hunting for innovative business models.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Famous in the casual games market, PopCap made its mark with the once-ubiquitous tile-matching Bejeweled series — which, according to its makers, once racked up a sale every 4.3 seconds and has sold in excess of 50 million units. After a post-Plants vs. Zombies acquisition by EA, the developer (which began inside a modest Seattle apartment) remains focused on breezy, grab-and-play fun.
Location: Rockville, Maryland
This three-decade-plus-old powerhouse became a household name on the strength of pioneering RPG series The Elder Scrolls, which boasts worlds so intricate that they necessitated the creation of a “loremaster” job role. Bethesda Softworks has expanded into just about every other genre since then, including sports games, strategy games, shooters and beyond.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Founded more than 20 years ago by a pair of former Microsoft employees, Valve catapulted to acclaim and popularity with its very first title, the first-person shooter turning point Half-Life. The company has also looked forward to hardware, particularly virtual reality. The team’s early VR breakthroughs infamously helped prompt Mark Zuckerberg to buy into the VR game.
Location: Irvine, California
The age of sequels surely extends to the gaming world, and these RPG specialists—launched in 2003 by a team of ex-Black Isle employees—built their name on a couple of better-than-the-original follow-ups: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and Neverwinter Nights 2. Meanwhile, the well-known crowdfunding success for Pillars of Eternity revealed that Obsidian is adept at maneuvering the long falls that can be endemic to the quicksilver gaming industry.
Location: Richardson, Texas
Even the most casual gamers are likely familiar with legacy id titles like Wolfenstein 3D (perhaps the ne plus ultra of RPG), DOOM (which helped usher in the modern multiplayer model) and QUAKE—all of which revolutionized what a PC game could be. The company also pioneered the shareware distribution model.
Location: Burbank, California
Holding some of the most prime IP this side of Marvel under its umbrella has proven a sound business strategy for this major entertainment company. The game division of Warner Bros. Entertainment operates hit franchises like Mortal Kombat, which is headed up by Chicago-based subsidiary NetherRealm Studios, and Batman: Arkham, which was launched by London-based wing Rocksteady Studios.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Big Fish works the desktop game market, but it’s known primarily as a purveyor of fun, low-stakes social/mobile distractions of the so-called “easy to play, hard to master” variety. Think beat-the-clock, puzzle, hidden object and tile-match games—like the plenty popular Gummy Drop!
Location: Woodland Hills, California
Infinity Ward and its marquee series, Call of Duty, remain key revenue generators, now as an Activision subsidiary. The company was launched back in 2002 by a 2015, Inc. breakaway team that had previously worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Two decades in, Santa Monica Studio still looks like a visionary. Cases in point: the God of War series has earned more than 190 Game of the Year awards; and the internally produced documentary Raising Kratos, about the tolls of game development.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Working both the consumer and B2B markets, FlowPlay’s focus is squarely on immersive community-building games. Vegas World goes the casino route, with nearly 50 casino-style games under one “roof, and ourWorld sports hundreds of games-within-a-world, all designed with a teen-girl audience in mind.
Location: Austin, Texas
Devolver Digital seeks out and shines a light on games from all over the planet, usually ones with a firmly offbeat sensibility. Examples range from a Swedish-made “violent ballet about friendship, imagination, and one man’s struggle to obliterate anyone in his path at the behest of a sentient banana,” to a turn-based adventure from a scrappy Polish indie about growing and selling weed.
Location: El Segundo, California
Nexon has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years and has produced dozens of massively multiplayer online role-playing games that are available to users in more than 190 countries. The company’s games can be played on Windows, Xbox, PlayStation and mobile.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Thatgamecompany’s video game offerings — Sky, Journey, Flower and Flow — focus on “meaningful emotional impact” and “human connection.” Over the years, its games have been featured in exhibits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and MoMA.
