The video-gaming industry no longer is just about fun and, well, games. As gaming and simulation technologies continue to advance, so do their potential applications.

The crisp, digital lines between education and entertainment are becoming more blurred.

“The more fun you can make education and training, the more effective it’s going to be,” said Raymond Hutchins, president and founder of the Interactive Gaming and Simulations Alliance in Boulder. “So why not use what we’ve learned to make training and learning more interesting, exciting and fun?”

Hutchins, a self-described “lifetime entrepreneur,” recognized the need for an industry collective three years ago during a technology conference held by TiE-Rockies, a regional organization of entrepreneurs.

While Hutchins had a working knowledge of gaming and was familiar with many top video game titles, he knew little about the industry itself.

“Because of that conference, I got to know all of these people in the video-game industry,” Hutchins said. “They had no organization before, but because the conference was so successful, everyone said, ‘let’s keep this thing going.’”

So in November 2006, Hutchins founded the IGSA (www.isga.biz), which now has more than 40 members, including seven educational institutions. According to Hutchins, membership has more than doubled in the past year.

He wants the IGSA to create an industry network to promote video games.

“[The IGSA’s] basic mission is to support each other and build a viable entertainment and simulation industry in Colorado,” Hutchins said.

Hutchins and his son, Glenn, hold quarterly IGSA meetings and send mail to more than 250,000 people involved in the video-gaming and software-development industry. The group also matches companies with gaming-development talent from across the United States.

“As companies interact with the IGSA, they can call upon us to hook them up with the talent they need,” Hutchins said. “We want to make Colorado a hub of this industry, an interactive entertainment cluster like Austin or L.A. or San Francisco or Boston.”

Hutchins’ originally earned his technology “wings” while practicing on flight simulators. Upon joining the U.S. Air Force in 1972, Hutchins was trained on flight simulators similar to those that eventually led to the launch of Microsoft’s flight-training modules, he said.

“The U.S. military is the largest and most effective training organization on the planet, and they totally get simulation and the power of gaming technology,” Hutchins said. “So why not use these interactive technologies that have already been proven by both the video-game industry and the U.S. military?”

One such example is IGSA member InVisM, a Greenwood Village simulations-based firm that specializes in what it refers to as “KLET” (knowledge, learning, education and training) applications.

“We’ve gone beyond just gaming,” said Russ Phelps, founder and CEO of InVisM. “Because of the broad applications we have, we’re moving into the education environment, as well as the interactive and immersive market.”

InVisM (formerly Intelligent Gaming) develops products that support training, simulation and visualization, mostly for government agencies and military services. Its patented RealityV software won the “Best Technology” award from Military Electronics magazine in 2008.

Though InVisM’s customer base consists mostly of government and military agencies, Phelps said InVisM also is able to apply scenario applications to small business departments, such as human resources and customer service.

The demand for virtual training is astonishing. InVisM went from six employees in 2008 to 26 full-time and 45 part-time employees currently, and took in more revenue in January than it did during all of 2008, according to Phelps.

“As the economy goes down, businesses want to hold onto customers more than ever, and that’s why they’re looking for cheaper and more effective training,” Phelps said.

Training and education aside, sometimes a game is just a game, and there’s still plenty of willing players. According to a study by independent Los Angeles- and Melbourne-based research firm IbisWorld, the video-game industry is poised to pull in $42 billion in 2009, nearly twice as much as in 2004.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the number of software-developing jobs has doubled since 1990 and may double again by 2016. And an April report by The Economist shows that 53 percent of adults and 97 percent of teenagers play video games on a regular basis.

The industry remains strong due to the inherent value of the games, Hutchins said.

“People are going to go where they can get the most bang for their buck, and video gaming is that place,” he said.

Grace Wong, brand manager of NetDevil, a Louisville company that develops multiplayer online games, agrees.

“We feel like at times such as this, digital entertainment is the cheapest form of entertainment,” Wong said. “We’re not feeling any pressure at all.”

She praised the ISGA, saying it’s “very informative and it’s a great networking opportunity. That’s what Hutchins is bringing to us.”

Industry pros were disappointed that Colorado lawmakers rejected House Bill 1010 on April 10, which would have offered tax-credit incentives (similar to those offered by other states, such as California) to film and video-game producers.

There’s a shortage of video-game talent in Colorado, and many gaming companies outsource work to other states — mostly California, where state tax incentives, along with technology trends, breed the cream of the gaming industry.

“We really support the bill because it means new, high-paying jobs for Colorado ...” Hutchins said before the bill was killed. “We’re focused on how we can build the industry and jobs here, and how we can bring specialized, technical talent into the state.”

Kevin Shand, executive director of the Colorado Film Commission, said the vote was nearsighted and would cost the state “millions of dollars” in revenue that would have come from a combination of film and video-game production jobs and film-related tourism.

“I understand their logic and that it doesn’t fit into the way they do their budgeting,” Shand said. “But from our side of the picture, it would have grown clean, well-paying jobs for Coloradans, with after-the-fact incentives.”

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