Yesterday, Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times got advance word of a study to be released this week by the Washington Interactive Network, a local offshoot of business advocacy group enterpriseSeattle. In short, WIN declares that Seattle is among the top three cities in the nation for video game development, placing us shoulder-to-shoulder with San Francisco and San Jose as worldwide leaders in "interactive media."

Spiffy! I said the same thing last September:

Our local game designers make up a two-degrees-of-separation nerd network that is the busiest in the nation, and that spider web of friendly, studio-swapping industry vets has helped our region gradually grow into national dominance.

I backed that assertion with some of the same stats WIN has trotted out this week. And WIN makes the pro-Seattle assertion via national comparison as well, comparing cost of business, educational access, and other variables across 12 American metropolitan regions. The group's report from September 2009 featured similarly sexy stats. In particular, WIN found that Seattle's game design employment numbers jumped 33% between 2006 and 2008.

And with the new national-comparison stats, Seattle has more solid numbers worth beating a drum over. WIN also deserves credit for keeping an eye on the potential taxing of digitally distributed software. This would not be a tiny development; if Olympia were ever to gather state tax on games and programs sold over the Internet, a sector that will only grow over the next decade, companies would route that revenue to other states within days.

But I'm not ready to call this study a win (...). The cherry-picked list of cities skips a few growing game centers, particularly the low-cost nexus of Raleigh-Durham, NC, home to many development houses (including Epic Games, one of Microsoft's biggest Xbox partners). The inclusion of small towns could've unearthed a few regions more conducive to new businesses, particularly in cities that offer tax incentives for interactive development houses. More glaring, the report doesn't rank its chosen cities, proving that WIN's numbers, while adding up to an inviting business climate, aren't quantifiable enough.

Ultimately, WIN's numbers do more to praise the past, a silly premise for an industry that depends on always-new technology. Worse, the study tacks its hopes for upward employment trends on "wireless talent," even though $1 iPhone game sales pull eensy-weensy revenues compared to hits on Xbox 360 and other home systems. That's an unreliable trend on which to stake our reputation, and too many other questions remain unanswered. What might the 2010 budget change for development houses old and new alike in Washington State? When will the city of Seattle, along with neighboring cities like Redmond and Bellevue, do anything to encourage, incentivize, and celebrate games companies? How can we attract new, small-fry developers who typically don't pull revenue for at least a year after incorporation?

WIN wants to make just enough ruckus to attract nationwide developers. The game fanatics who call Seattle's basements home have already played this little psuedo-publicity game before, though, and they're ready for the next level of serious, locally focused thought on the industry.