Should We Make Non-Compete Agreements Illegal in Masssachusetts?

I say yes, in Sunday's Globe column, though as always, I'm curious to hear what you think.

If you want to change the status quo, here are a couple sites to know about:

- Prohibit Restrictive Employee Covenants
- Rep. Will Brownsberger's site. Brownsberger is the state rep who has introduced a bill to make non-competes illegal in Massachusetts
- Alliance for Open Competition
- Massachusetts Non-Compete Law blog

There were so many great comments that couldn't fit in the story, but just one for the blog from Jeff Anderson, CEO of Quick Hit (and former CEO of Turbine, another local games company mentioned in the column).

"The biggest problem we have as a start-up is attracting and retaining talent. If someone wants to relocate to Massachusetts, they need to feel like if this job doesn't work out, they can find another job. But if non-competes are de rigeur, if not only reduces the number of companies that you have in any given space, like games, but it forces those people to leave." Anderson adds that he has received two or three dozen job applications from talented people working for other games companies in Massachusetts, but says that it would be problematic to hire them because of their non-competes.

"When you think about all the other problems that start-ups have to deal with, from capital and vision to competition, and all the pieces that have to be properly aligned, non-competes just add to that."

Of course, like most companies in Massachusetts, even though Anderson is philosophically against non-competes, he asks employees to sign one, even though he says it is as narrowly-defined as possible.

Good News / Bad News

Good news first.

The Entertainment Software Association says that the video game and computer industry in the Bay State grew 12.3 percent in 2006, quadruple the commonwealth's overall growth. They say that Mass. is the fifth-biggest employer of video game personnel... behind California, Washington, Texas, and New York. Average salary is $84,818.

Now, the bad news....a report from MassInc says that we're second-to-last in terms of creating new jobs. From the Globe's coverage of that report:

Even if the nation avoids a recession, a recent forecast by the New England Economic Partnership projects the state won't recover the jobs until 2012 - 11 years after the 2001 peak. That would mark the first time since at least 1940 that the state has gone more than a decade without increasing payroll employment, said Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies and the lead author of the MassINC study.

"We should be embarrassed," Sum said. "The governor, the Legislature have to get back in there and say, 'What are we going to do to create jobs in this state.' Somebody's got to advocate for jobs here."

The erosion of manufacturing, long a ladder to the middle class, and the emergence of industries requiring specialized skills also threaten to create a "boutique economy" that rewards the highly educated and the skilled, but leaves behind broad swaths of the labor force, the study warned.

'Guitar Hero III' vs. 'Rock Band': The Game Genre Harmonix Invented

Cambridge-based Harmonix gave birth to the newly-hot genre of music-based videogames, and this morning the NY Times has a story on the two latest releases: 'Rock Band,' from Harmonix and its parent company, MTV, and 'Guitar Hero III,' from Activision. In just one week, 'Guitar Hero III' (the franchise was launched by Harmonix, but is now the property of Activision) raked in $115 million in sales.

From Robert Levine's piece in the Times:

The rivalry between MTV and Activision is made more stark in that both Rock Band and the previous versions of Guitar Hero were developed by Harmonix Music Systems (the newest Guitar Hero was developed by another studio).

MTV purchased Harmonix in September 2006 for $175 million cash, in a deal that did not include rights to the Guitar Hero franchise. To distribute Rock Band, it signed a deal with Activision’s main competitor, Electronic Arts.

Like any battle of the bands, this one features its share of trash talk.

“MTV trying to take on Guitar Hero is like us trying to go into the music cable business,” [Activision chairman Robert] Kotick said. One of the largest video game makers, Activision is enjoying its best year ever, because of Guitar Hero II, several successful movie tie-ins and the latest entry in the action game Call of Duty.

Boston's bustling vid-game scene

Watha has a nice piece in the Globe today about the increasingly happening vid-game scene here in Boston, along with a side-bar that looks at some of the hottest developers and their games. He writes:

Three of the year's most anticipated new video games -- Rock Band, BioShock, and Lord of the Rings Online -- are products of Boston-area studios, and for the first time in two decades the world is looking to the Boston area for some of the coolest new computer games.

Companies like Turbine Inc. of Westwood, Blue Fang Games LLC in Waltham, and 2K Boston in Quincy, formerly known as Irrational Games, are making their mark in the $7 billion market for video game software, producing titles that attract critical acclaim and millions of players. GamerMetrics, which tracks discussions of games on blogs and websites, ranks 2K Boston's BioShock -- which goes on sale today -- as the 10th most anticipated game of the year. Turbine's Lord of the Rings was the best-selling game for desktop computers in April, the month of its premiere, and remained among the top 10 sellers in May and June, according to market research firm NPD Group.

If you're interested in the local gaming community, the monthly event to know about is Post Mortem, usually held at The Skellig in Waltham.