Photo by Brian Mosely
Crystal Palmer, director of D.C.’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, has a new target: video games. Palmer spent much of last week in Los Angeles attending the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, an annual confab of video-game producers.
While in Los Angeles, Palmer met with representatives from Sony, Nintendo and video game software developers hoping to encourage the companies to move some of their business to the District, according to a film office press release.
Palmer’s been talking about video games for a while now. In April, at a D.C. Council hearing, Palmer told members of the Small and Local Business Development Committee she thinks that electronic games could be D.C.’s next hot industry. In her testimony, Palmer talked about video games as both an add-on and open competitor to the film industry that is her primary bailiwick.
Thing is, the District might actually have a better shot at recruiting video game producers than it does film crews. There’s still no evidence that the Council is any closer to restoring the film office’s incentive program for movie and television productions—remember, that’s why so many titles ostensibly set in Washington only come here for the requisite establishing shots while they do the bulk of their work elsewhere—but existing legislation could be more hospitable toward video games.
At E3, Palmer played up the District’s tech incentives, which have been in effect for more than a decade. As Lydia DePillis pointed out the other day, D.C.’s offerings to small and midsize high-tech firms are already pretty robust. Among other benefits, tech firms that move their operations to the District can enjoy freezes on property taxes, exemptions on sales taxes and reduced income taxes with an abatement of up to 10 years. There are also credits for new hires and employee relocation. Mayor Vince Gray, newfound technophile that he is, has talked at length this year about expanding the field to which the incentives are available.
Is it attractive enough to poach existing video game developers from their current locations to the District? Perhaps. Financial incentives directly targeting the video-game industry are becoming increasingly competitive between the jurisdictions that offer them. Beginning next year, Virginia will extend its tax credit covering up to 15 percent of a film shoot’s expenses to also cover those of video games produced in the commonwealth. Maryland’s incentive program shows no similar plans.
But if video game developers qualify for the tech incentive and Palmer can sell it, a segment a powerful entertainment industry might see the District as a more favorable place. And there’s plenty of money to go around. In 2011, the U.S. video game industry raked in $17 billion. Total domestic box office receipts were $10.2 billion.
And if the District does grow a video game industry, the film office says it might not look that dissimilar to the movie industry to which the D.C. government currently offers nothing. Palmer’s spokeswoman, Leslie Green, told DCist last week that her office is specifically interested in attracting production of the filmed segments of video games. In another intersection of Hollywood and the joystick, one project the film office says its scouting locations for is a video game to be produced by Prometheus director Ridley Scott.
