Outlook 2023: Brian Corrigan aims to be the best with launch of video game development startup in Glenville
GLENVILLE – When Brian Corrigan was a child, he spent hours tearing apart his father’s work computer and putting it back together in an effort to learn how the machine functioned.
His tinkering wasn’t always well-received, but it laid the groundwork for a career in the tech industry, where Corrigan has spent more than a decade working in video game development at various companies — including several successful startups he helped launch — throughout the Capital Region.
“I took that thing apart many, many times when he wasn’t home with a screwdriver, trying to understand how it worked,” said Corrigan, who grew up in Bethlehem, of his father’s computer. “And then once or twice I’m pretty sure I put it back together and it didn’t work. … I remember getting yelled at for being so interested in this. And obviously hindsight is hilarious, because it’s my career.”
Today, the 45-year-old Corrigan is still tearing things apart and reassembling them.
His latest project includes converting the former Glenville firehouse along Route 50 into the future headquarters of Rocket Science, the rapidly growing startup he cofounded last July with his business partner, Thomas Daniel, that focuses on online multiplayer video game development.
The company, currently headquartered at a leased office space in Saratoga County, just hired its 22nd employee and has offices in Austin, Texas, and the United Kingdom, with future plans calling for expanding the company’s footprint and growing the staff to 100.
At the center of that growth will be the old firehouse at 446 Saratoga Road. Corrigan said the building had been on his radar since 2004, when he drove past the site daily from his Ballston Spa home to his job at Multimedia Games in Schenectady, where he oversaw the development of casino gaming around the state before leaving to pursue a lifelong passion in the video game industry. Read more here.