San Francisco may play host to scores of small indie studios looking for a slice of the limelight, but in stark contrast the city by the bay us also the home of some of the mobile industry's biggest players.
One such behemoth is social gaming specialist Zynga.
This giant of the scene has fostered a big presence for itself across San Francisco, partaking in everything from traditional publishing to indie outreach, educating young developers just starting out on their journey.
Colleen McCreary is the chief people officer at Zynga. She arrived in the early days of the company having previously worked at Electronic Arts for five years.
She believes that San Francisco is the ideal environment for Zynga because the company's culture matches very closely with that of the city as a whole.
Diversity
"The San Francisco Bay Area is an amazing, diverse creative hub in tech and in music, in arts, education and food," McCreary told us as part of our week long look at development across the city.
"In addition to our employees loving to live and work in San Francisco, the merging of cultures informs everything we do here at Zynga. Our environment inspires our employees who make the games millions of people want to play."
Zynga's San Francisco HQ
Colleen was crucial in helping Zynga to grow in San Francisco, taking the business from 130 people to 3,000 in three years flat something Zynga believes makes it the fastest growing company in the whole of Silicon Valley.
Outside this expanding circle, Zynga also operates alongside huge numbers of smaller indie developers and other gaming start-ups, such as middleware companies and PR agencies. Colleen believes that the history and culture of the Bay Area is crucial in continuing to attract more and more businesses to this vast gaming community.
"The San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley is a magnate for creative talent and for people with big ideas," added McCreary.
"People tend to be open minded here and when you are disruptive and breaking new ground, like we often do at Zynga, that's exactly where you want to be. The Bay Area is a hotbed for technological innovation.
"In addition to being a creative intersection, it's ground zero for entrepreneurial software engineers."
Responsibility
Given the scale of Zynga's operations within San Francisco, the firm also believes it has a responsibility to support the wider industry across the region.
Colleen herself has introduced initiatives at Zynga that she originally kicked off at EA several years ago, being credited with starting EA's first diversity initiative and university relations programme.
Relationships with educational institutions are now crucial in how Zynga combats the ultra-competitive recruitment market in San Francisco, as well as helping the business to support the community. Colleen explains.
"Zynga leaders are very active within the games and tech community and at universities," said McCreary.
"They frequently speak with groups outside of Zynga, often to entrepreneurs, and we frequently invite groups to Zynga for educational programs and to meet and talk with our teams."
Admittedly, Zynga is in the unique position of having the resources to engage in these activities on a large scale.
However, interacting with universities and other institutions is something might also pay off for smaller studios in San Francisco, if only to identify the needs of the industry's stakeholders and spot new talent.
Indeed, everyone we've spoken to during our sweep of San Francisco has identified recruitment as the biggest problem in the city, and interaction with gamers at large stands as one of the main ways to combat the issue.
Networking
Outside of this, there are still some other things Zynga would like to see evolve in San Francisco, despite the success its enjoyed to date.
The city comes alive during events like GDC, but perhaps the local companies don't do a great job of communicating with each other throughout the rest of the year. Coleen explains.
"We'd love to see more opportunities realised. More networking and collaboration among peers and groups," she offered.
"The tech community is very supportive and entrepreneurial by design, and fosters respect for ideas and innovation."
You can see if our other participants in our look at the mobile development scene in San Francisco Storm8 and PlayFirst raise similar issues throughout the rest of the week.
Have you worked in video game development in San Francisco? What was your experience of the area and what do you think the future holds?
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
