[ 2011 ARTICLE EXCERPT ]
Booming Video Game Industry in Dallas
Dallas has found a fantasy that pays real money .
Think of this game ' s monster as the recession . Around Dallas , the video game industry has helped shoot it down , with double-barrel , doubledigit growth every year since 2005 — right through America ' s worst economic crisis since the great depression . Why Dallas ? It ' s mostly a happy coincidence . In 1993 a Dallas company created Doom , a landmark first-person shooter video game .
The industry took off : video game studios now employs 1,100 people here . Dallas-based GameStop has become the world ' s largest video game retailer . In the U . S ., annual video game revenue is $ 25 billion . That ' s almost double movies and music revenues combined . Graduate students at Southern Methodist University also want a piece of the gaming action . Peter Raad founded SMU ' s masters program in video game development .
[ 2019 ARTICLE EXCERPT ]
Student Game Makers at SMU ' s Guildhall Score a Surprise Hit With a Class Assignment , FrostRunner
Student game , FrostRunner , set university records and won viral acclaim . Its first day on Steam , it reached the front page . This is no easy task . An outpouring of positive reviews from players , along with a fortuitous spotlight by YouTuber " KYRSP33DY " ( 2.3 million subscribers ), helped the game vault over barriers where other games of their size might get lost in the crowd . They were astonished to see FrostRunner quickly topple the 100K — and then 250K — download mark , rising to claim its seat amongst Guildhall ' s most downloaded games to date , not long after its release .
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