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Wisconsin is a far cry from Hollywood, but the state has begun to carve out a reputation for creating video games. A surprisingly large number of big-name titles are developed here. According to new statistics released by the Entertainment Software Association, game development added about $23.3 million to the state’s economy in 2009.

Wisconsin companies that create games range from the eerily gothic (Raven Software) to the youthful and irreverent (Frozen Codebase).

raven software

Raven Software is the state’s largest and oldest developer. Founded by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel in Madison, the company released its first title (the fantasy-themed “Black Crypt”) for the Commodore Amiga personal computer in 1992.

Since then, the company has grown to include 145 employees and worked with the likes of id Software, the creators of 1993’s “Doom,” perhaps the most influential video game of all time – and certainly one of the best selling and most controversial for its violent (though pixilated by today’s standards) portrayal of a space marine’s battle with alien forces.

In the midst of Doom’s heyday, Raven developed gothic-themed games for id using the company’s 3-D technology – “Heretic” (1994), “Hexen” (1995) and subsequent sequels. Most recently, Raven developed a reboot of an old id franchise with 2009’s “Wolfenstein,” a “first-person shooter” in which the player fights (shoots, mostly) supernatural Nazi forces. “We have a really good relationship with the folks over at id,” says MaryAnn Knoke, Raven’s operations manager.

The developer has created other big titles for distribution by its publisher, which is Activision, one of the world’s largest. It bought Raven in 1997 but allowed it to hold onto its unique culture – which is typified by an iron maiden (the classic implement of medieval torture) in the office break room.

Despite its medieval leanings, the company has Dairyland roots. “We’re still Midwestern even though we’re in the video game industry,” she says. “We don’t have Maserati’s in the parking lot. Some of the studios out in California are not as homegrown.”

But Raven is highly influential in Wisconsin, where former employees have gone on to found other development companies in the state, developers like Human Head Studios in Madison, creators of the 2006 hit “Prey,” and the relatively new Frozen Codebase in Green Bay.

Codebase’s website says it’s working with Japanese video game titan Konami on “multiple game titles” – but it doesn’t reveal any details. For competitive reasons, developers routinely keep their projects a secret until embarking upon a pre-release media campaign.

Whatever Raven’s working on now, Knoke’s not saying. It’s likely to be something big. “There’s no way you can argue they’re not the biggest player on (Wisconsin’s) scene. They’re making big triple-A titles and bringing in huge contracts,” says Spencer Striker, who teaches in the media arts and game development program at UW-Whitewater. He also serves as executive producer of GameZombie.tv, the popular website featuring game news videos produced by students (and winner of the Webby award in 2008 and 2009).

Striker, whose real surname is Stuart until he changes it officially later this month, says the state’s other developers “are smaller but more independent as well.” He’d like to see state’s developers come together and show some team spirit. “Wisconsin’s game industry really needs to work on defining itself,” he says.

Milwaukee’s top developer, Guild Software, perhaps best typifies the industry’s do-it-yourself ethic. The company, which develops and administers the PC-only “Vendetta Online,” was founded in 1998 by a group of friends who wanted to create a game in which players, through the Internet, could dogfight en masse in space ships.

The subscription-based business model they were envisioning would later become an entire genre of games called massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs), the best-known of which is the immensely popular World of Warcraft.

CEO John Bergman says Guild worked on Vendetta and tried to sell it to a publisher for six long years. “We were way ahead of the curve, which was really challenging for us. We encountered a lot of publisher skepticism. We were not a proven team in their eyes because we had not put a product on the shelves,” he says. Guild succeeded in 2004, however, in putting Vendetta onto store shelves, only to later switch, like much of the games industry, to online sales allowing the customer to download games directly to their computer.

Today, the game is a free download and comes with an eight-hour free trial. To play longer, players subscribe for $10 a month. The subscriptions help keep the servers running and Guild’s four employees paid as they improve the game. Most recently, they gave players the ability to conquer and hold space stations in the game universe.

“We continually try to expand the game play that’s available,” Bergman says. “It’s always been our goal to make a sandbox-type game where players can do whatever they want and find their place within a persistent, ongoing type of universe.”

Owe Petersen, chair of the electrical engineering and computer science program at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, says he meets “a significant number” of students who enter the department’s software engineering program who want to write games. He cautions them, however, to consider other options.

Employment in the games industry can be hard to come by. It’s easiest to find in California, Texas, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois, the top six states for game development, according to the Entertainment Software Association report. (No other states were ranked.)

Petersen also warns students against letting games interfere with their classes. “Many of the software students are in love with games, and they don’t spend enough time on studying,” he says.

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