A scene from Dreamhack, the world’s largest video game festival
This weekend the Georgia World Congress Center will play host to DreamHack Atlanta, a three day ‘digital festival’ centered around video games. The event expects to draw more than 25,000 visitors downtown to explore the convention, play games, and watch professional gamers battle it out on huge screens.
The European festival, started in Sweden in 1994, has made Atlanta one of its first stateside destinations in large part due to its tax credits that have made it one of the premiere locations for video game development outside of California. The state’s film, television, and digital entertainment tax credits are well known for bringing the film industry to Georgia, but those same tax breaks are extended to video game production companies as well. Those 30% credits have sparked a wave of companies to make Georgia their home, including well known Hi-Rez Studios, Tripwire, and Xaviant.
The industry in the state has seen exponential growth over the past decade, growing from a mere 8 companies in 2005 to more than 120 today. According to the Georgia Game Developers Association, an advocacy group for the industry, the economic impact of game developers in Georgia in 2015 was over $550 million.
Dreamhack offers those companies to show off for not only the 25,000+ in attendance, but for tens of thousands more watching the event online.
Economists are already remarking on the video game industry’s rapid rise in Georgia, praising the tax credit system that has allowed it, like the film and television industries, to thrive. “You’re getting a lot more companies coming to town saying, ‘OK, we can set up shop here,’ if you have the tax credit and you have demand, companies in Georgia that are promoting eSports. You have a big company like Turner, who’s in town, who’s creating an eSports branch,” said Emory University economics professor Tom Smith. “You’ve got these big eSports events that are taking place. So you have this perfect storm of supply and demand for a market to take off, and it’s quite impressive.”
