The state of New York is aiming to grow its game development repertoire with panel discussions that will be held this week. New York Senator Martin J. Golden and NYU-Poly have planned out and organized fact-finding sessions so that the Senate, the Governor’s office, and government representatives will be able to hear from 25 industry leaders in two panels, which will be held this Friday on September 20.

Senator Martin J. Golden, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, MTV Digital executive producer Tom Akel, Games for Change co-president Asi Burak, and Kickstarter community head Cindy Au will be in attendance as part of the 25 industry leaders.

According to data provided by Entertainment Software Association (ESA) New York is among the top five states in games industry employment, but falls dramatically behind California, Texas, and Washington in jobs offered. There are over 5,000 direct and indirect game development jobs and the mean salary is over $90,000 in New York.

Golden went into detail describing the current situation.

“The gaming software industry is large and growing and New York State can claim an increasing share for our citizens,” Golden said. “At present, New York State lags behind California, Texas, and Washington in the number of companies, employees, and contribution to the economy. We have about one-tenth the number of game software employees as California and one tenth of California’s gaming software’s contribution of $2.16 billion to the state economy. Even Texas has twice the economic impact and twice the number of employees of New York. Clearly we can do better. We have the talent and we have the people.”

“The purpose of these Roundtables is to create policy and program that will make us the center of the game software universe,” he added. ” When companies and gaming entrepreneurs think of gaming software, we want them to think of New York State. We are taking our first steps to make that happen with this Roundtable.”

Hopefully this can lead to the games industry having a bigger impact here in the States, and especially in New York. More details concerning the outcome of these panels will be provided in the coming weeks.

(Source: Gamespot)

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