Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: WOW, Blizzard to hit Austin ...

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

WOW, Blizzard to hit Austin ...

Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) is coming to Austin.

According to the Austin Business Journal, Blizzard "has secured a 46,000-square-foot office building in Northeast Austin where it will relocate a significant portion of its gaming support staff along with quality-control and internal support groups" and "the new facility will eventually house around 500 employees."

Nice.

So, on the Austin MMO front, Blizzard will be joining NCSoft, Sony Online (who are working on the DC Online MMO), and BioWare (working on an unannounced MMO). Plus, there are non-MMO big guns in Austin (like Midway, working on Blacksite: Area 51, I suspect Criminal, and probably something else), not to mention the tons of other development and related studios in Austin, like Pixel Mine Productions (who does the Ashen Empires MMO), The Animation Farm (makers of top-caliber art assets), and turnkey / outsourcing experts Critical Mass Interactive.

And though Blizzard says they currently don't plan on putting a development studio here, people like Rich Vogel (previous co-founder of Sony Online Austin and current co-studio director for Bioware in Austin) say down the road that may make sense, due to the industry-specific (and, I would add, the high-tech industry-related) talent pool in Austin.

This is great news for Austin.

Five hundred people? Surely they need a big-gun enterprise service manager rock star ...

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

WOW, Blizzard to hit Austin ...

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