Inspired by Kent’s Boston game company graph, I decided to re-render it in Prefuse, mostly because I like its force-directed graph layout function better. Since Kent graciously provided the source for the graph in Graphviz format, I was able to cram it into Excel and generate a GraphML file that Prefuse could interpret. I also added a bunch of new links and corrections to Kent’s original graph, which he also supplied me.
One of the things that I like about a force-directed layout is that you can see natural clustering of graph elements a little bit better. You can see three major clusters in the Boston game industry: Looking Glass/Infocom/MIT, Papyrus/Sierra, and then kind of a serious games branch off to the side.
Here’s the color code:
- Gray node: Defunct Boston game company
- Red node: Defunct non-Boston or non-game company
- White node: Non-game company
- Green node: Non-Boston game company (although I’m not sure why the Red Sox ended up green…)
- Blue node: Boston game company
- Green arrow: buyout
- Red arrow: spinout
- Blue arrow: transfer of key employees, “key” being pretty loosely defined
-Darius