Texas is known for many things. The Lone Star State gave us BBQ, Tex-Mex, and country music; it’s also home to NASA’s flight control center, and is a major exporter of oil.
There are plenty of things that people associate the state with and this tiny list barely scratches the surface. But if you were to spend an entire day listing the things that pop into your mind when you think of Texas, video games probably wouldn’t make the cut.
It should, though, as The Lone Star State has a thriving gaming industry that puts many other parts of the United States to shame.
There are two sides to this industry: there is the consumption element and the production element, and both are booming in Texas.
Demand for Gaming Among Texans
Gaming is growing in demand right around the world, with more than half of the planet’s adult population enjoying this form of media at least occasionally. This has been brought on by a range of different factors, including the increasingly easy ways for people to access gaming content thanks to smartphones and the internet.
Another driver for the growth of gaming is the sheer variety of options that is available to players. In addition to the more traditional video games like driving, sports, and shooting titles, casual and casino games have become more accessible.
For example, sites like PokerStars Casino have created several variants of classics like roulette, such as Premium and High Roller roulette, that allow them to cater to every taste.
A similar thing has happened with casual games, with both Google and Apple acquiring around a million titles each in their respective digital stores, including Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Candy Crush.
Free-to-play games have also helped to get more people interested in the medium since they’ve lowered the barriers to entry and made it affordable for just about everybody.
Many of these factors have helped to make gaming more popular in Texas, too. And when you consider that it is the second-most populous state in the whole of the United States, behind only California, it is, clearly, almost always a huge market for consumer goods and services, regardless of what they are.
When you include the fact that the state has the 11th fastest internet connections in the USA with above average broadband coverage at 85.3%, then you can see that the Texan video game market has a huge pool of consumers to sell to.
Not Just a Consumer
But Texans aren’t just consumers of video game content. The state is also a big contributor to the industry.
While it may only account for a small fraction of the state’s $2 trillion GDP, the $4.15 billion added to the Texan economy each year by the gaming industry is certainly nothing to be sniffed at.
According to the Entertainment Software Association’s research, this figure was made up of $1.8 billion of direct video game output and a further $2.4 billion of “participants in the video game ecosystem” which includes companies that supply equipment and services to video game developers and publishers.
This makes Texas the third biggest producer of video game-related economic output in the United States of America, behind only California and Washington. This is very impressive when you consider that California is known for being the home of Silicon Valley and neighboring Washington has been muscling in on the action for decades.
It also means that Texas generates twice as much from gaming as New York, the state that is home to Rockstar Games, Riot Games, and Zynga.
Creating Jobs for Texans
To create serious cash for the Texan economy, the state’s video game industry needs people. That’s why there are around 25,000 Texans working both directly and indirectly for the industry.
Around 9,800 of them work for companies producing content directly, while it is believed there are around 15,200 more employed by businesses that support them.
So, no matter what way you look at it, Texas is a video game powerhouse that could one day challenge California.
