Everyone knows Saratoga is the place to be for foodies and racing fanatics, wellness gurus and 46ers. But hiding in plain sight is a whole other world: a thriving video game development industry bringing talented developers and designers to upstate New York.
Saratoga’s Rushdown Studios is leading the charge—and growing at a rapid pace. Founded in 2021 by industry veterans Kirk Becker, Andy Polidore, and Richard Hall, Rushdown now has more than 30 employees and sees the future as only up from here.
Rushdown got its start working on the backend of video games; in other words, it focused on the server-side functionality of games (such as storing player data, matchmaking in multiplayer games, and reducing lag), rather than front-end gameplay mechanics or graphics. “In the past, we’ve handed off the visual design and implementation in the game to our partners’ engineers,” Polidore says. “But we decided that was something we could do ourselves, so we’ve built a UI/UX team that does designs/mockups/art as well as the technical implementation into the game. This allows us to take on larger features and, frankly, it’s fun to be able to point to visual things in a game and say, ‘We built that!’”
For those not privy to the way video games are made, UI stands for user interface (how the game looks) and UX stands for user experience (how the game works). Not only do games need to be visually appealing—they also need to be easy to interact with. These days, Rushdown handles both sides of the coin.
It makes sense that a company in such a digital industry would thrive with a remote work environment, but at Rushdown, personal connection is at the heart of the creative process. To that end, team members have the option to collaborate in a physical office located above the AMC movie theater in downtown Saratoga—an office that also promotes connection to the local community.
“We love the region,” says Polidore, a Johnstown native whose work took him to New York City for a time. He notes that being within walking distance of Saratoga’s bustling bars, restaurants, and coffee shops was a priority when hunting for an office space. “That’s why we’re here,” he continues. “Our rent is more than it would have been somewhere else, but we really wanted to grow something here. I always said, if I was going to come back to upstate New York, Saratoga would be the place.”
And Rushdown isn’t the only video game development studio in town. When Polidore, a Union College grad, moved back to the area from New York City, he landed at MadGlory, now PUBG MadGlory, a company that’s been integral in shaping the area’s video game development scene. Polidore
is quick to note that the scene has been here for years: Now, he says, “that’s grown even more.”
Part of the area’s appeal for studios like Rushdown and PUBG MadGlory is the steady stream of talent. “What’s great about where we are, number one, is that we have a cluster of studios, so there actually are people with perfect, relevant experience,” Polidore says. “We also have a lot of great colleges like RPI and RIT. All the tech schools around here really build high-quality people that grow into game engineers, and they’re really improving their game engineering programs.”
To date, Rushdown has worked on top games including PUBG: Battlegrounds, Among Us, League of Legends, and Last Epoch. But with each new hire and new discipline added, the company gets closer to being able to build out entire games on its own. Will the world’s next blockbuster video game come out of Saratoga Springs, NY? We can see the rendered Thoroughbreds coming down the stretch now.
