Visual Concepts Entertainment is an American

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

based in

Novato, California Novato (Spanish for "Novatus") is a city in Marin County, California, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area. At the 2020 census, Novato had a population of 53,225. History What is now Novato was originally the site of several Coast Miwok ...

. Founded in May 1988, the company is best known for developing

sports games A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize actually playing the sport (s ...

in the ''2K'' franchise, most recently ''

NBA 2K ''NBA 2K'' is a series of basketball sports simulation video games developed by Visual Concepts and released annually since 1999. The premise of the series is to emulate the sport of basketball, and more specifically, the National Basketball A ...

'' and ''

WWE 2K ''WWE 2K'', formerly released as ''WWF/E SmackDown!'' and ''SmackDown vs. Raw'', is a series of professional wrestling sports video games that launched in 2000. The premise of the series is to emulate the sport of professional wrestling, and mo ...

'', and previously ''

NFL 2K ''NFL 2K'' is an American football video game series developed by Visual Concepts and published by Sega. The series was originally exclusive to Sega's Dreamcast video game console due to the absence of EA Sports's Madden NFL series on the sy ...

'' and '' College Hoops 2K''. Visual Concepts was acquired by

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

in May 1999 and sold to

Take-Two Interactive Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City and founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993. The company owns two major publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K, which operate internal g ...

in January 2005. The acquisition of the company led Take-Two Interactive to open their 2K label which Visual Concepts became part of, on the day following the acquisition. Visual Concepts operates nine studios (in Agoura Hills, Austin, Budapest, Foothill Ranch, Novato, Parksville, San Jose, Seoul and Shanghai.) As of December 2018, the company employs more than 350 people.

History

Visual Concepts was founded in 1988 by

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

Scott Patterson and brothers Greg and Jeff Thomas, and was originally based in a small office above a bank in

. On January 25, 1995, Electronic Arts announced that they had acquired a stake in the company. In September 1997,

announced their intentions to acquire the company; the deal was closed on May 18, 1999, and Visual Concepts switched ownership for an undisclosed sum. Following a June 2004 deal between Sega and

, wherein the two would co-publish and distribute titles in Visual Concepts'

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

-based game series, rumors started spreading in December 2004, which suggested that Take-Two Interactive was planning to acquire Visual Concepts from Sega. On January 24, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced to have completed a transaction of to Sega for the acquisition of Visual Concepts, its subsidiary

Kush Games 2K Los Angeles (formerly Kush Games, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Camarillo, California. Founded by Umrao Mayer in 1998, the company was part of Visual Concepts, which itself was a part of Sega. Both Kush Games and Visual ...

, and the

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

to the ''2K'' franchise. The publisher's 2006

Form 10-K A Form 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that gives a comprehensive summary of a company's financial performance. Although similarly named, the annual report on Form 10-K is distinct from the of ...

filing later showed that a total of had been paid to Sega for the acquisition of Visual Concepts and affiliated properties by January 2006. On January 25, 2005, the day following the acquisition, Take-Two Interactive announced their new publishing label, 2K, which would henceforth manage Visual Concepts and Kush Games. A March 2009 research study on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

scores, conducted by GameQuarry, ranked Visual Concepts as the number one "most consistent" video game developer on the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website, with 50 out of their 72 games at the time having received an aggregated review score of 80/100 or higher. In August 2010, Visual Concepts laid off 30 employees due to "the need for resource alignment and better efficiency". In December 2018, at

The Game Awards 2018 The Game Awards 2018 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2018. It was produced and hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of The Game Awards, and was held to an invited audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angele ...

, Greg Thomas was honored with the "Industry Icon" award for his 30-year services with Visual Concepts. 2K acquired HookBang's game division, which had worked with Visual Concepts on the ''NBA 2K'' games previously, in March 2021. The division was rebranded as Visual Concepts Austin to continue to support Visual Concepts.

Games developed

1989–2004

2005–present

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1988 establishments in California 1999 mergers and acquisitions 2005 mergers and acquisitions 2K (company) American companies established in 1988 Companies based in Marin County, California Novato, California Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Take-Two Interactive divisions and subsidiaries Video game companies based in California Video game companies established in 1988 Video game companies of the United States Video game development companies