News

A still from the video game Flash Frozen.

Flash Frozen, a video game developed by a class of a dozen UW-Stout game design and development students, was declared national co-champion at the Entertainment Software Association’s E3 conference in Los Angeles on June 13. Sixty games from schools across the country were entered into the College Game Competition, which was judged by some of the world’s leading game design professionals at the expo, the premier event in the video and computer gaming industry. The UW-Stout entry tied with Lost In Thought, which was created by students from the Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design. Flash Frozen, which was created in Stout’s Senior 3D Game Design class, is described as a survival horror game in which players must endure dangerous environments and freezing temperatures while trying to escape a broken-down ship. Oh, and did we mention ship is haunted? (To learn more about the game and to check out a trailer, visit flashfrozengame.com.) The expo gave the 12 students and two professors who created Flash Frozen an opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the bigwigs in the industry and to meet the next generation of gaming superstars. According to the ESA, the expo drew more than 48,000 video game professionals, investor, journalists, and retailers from more than 100 countries. The victory is a big step for UW-Stout’s new game design program. “It’s a remarkable milestone for Flash Frozen to win the national title and be created by students from a program that is only four years old,” said program director Diane Christie. Even before the competition, UW-Stout’s game design and development program was already making a name for itself: Earlier this year, the Princeton Review ranked it among the top 30 video game programs in the U.S. and Canada.

The Flash Frozen team.

If Wisconsin's film Incentive program had continued as originally planned,
we may have gotten more out of it than Johnny Depp in a fedora.

That’s right, this week the Legislative Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate Wisconsin’s Film Production Services and Investment Credit.  Got that?  Good.  The tax credit was originally put in place to benefit the statewide film, commercial, television, and video game industry. 

Film Wisconsin, a non-profit whose aim was to grow the arts economy in Wisconsin, played a major role in putting these incentives in place in 2006.  Among these incentives was a 25% tax credit on certain wages, salary and production costs as well as 15% on the purchase of personal property and items and the amount spent on purchasing, constructing or remodeling property.  Before the cut the incentive program totaled $500,000.

It seems that these incentives were cut simply due to infrequent use, which may be linked to their high accreditation requirements.  In order for a film, video, or broadcast advertisement to have been accredited it must have exceeded $50,000 in production costs in a 12-month period, and $100,000 for electronic games in a 36-month period.

So, I guess don’t expect there to be a sequel to Public Enemies any time soon, or at least not one filmed in Wisconsin.  But if you want to help out, perhaps a call to the state legislators or the Governor’s office might help keep these incentives going.