Evolution of an Indie

Well, in terms of the event itself - I've been to Develop Brighton a few times and always enjoyed it because it's UK developers getting together and talking about UK development issues. It's a little bit more intimate than the GDCs around the world - they're great as well, but they tend to be massive events that you lose yourself in, whereas Develop is a much smaller, so I hope they recreate that up in Liverpool.

I'm familiar with quite a few developers around London, but throwing it out and getting up into the North will be useful for hooking up with developers up there... and that's one of the main reasons I'm heading up. Plus Liverpool's a great city, and events up there have always got a relaxed atmosphere.

Yes, you do - in terms of things like networking, for example we're starting to do a little bit of work with Sony. That's all well and good, and when you're at a GDC you can talk about Sony, but over here you could see the guy you need to deal with having a drink at the bar and go have a chat with him now.

In terms of production methodology, and the manner in which games are created, I think those issues are pretty similar wherever you are in the world - the best way to get maximum performance out of your Xbox or PC, they're pretty common.

But the business side of it is very different, and the climate in the UK at the moment, I think, is quite supportive of the creative industries. A lot of the finance and support we've got from the government I've picked up from just talking to people, who have suggested looking into an EU media grant, or whatever it might be.

And also, because it's not a huge community in the UK, you tend to see the same people again and again, which I quite like - whereas at GDC, there are so many people... of course you do bump into old friends, but not in the same way.

Well, I think the government does more than it is credited for in the industry, actually. But it's a bit tangential - you've got to work a little bit more to find it, it's not on a plate. I'm talking more now about the money that the government makes available for small businesses, which of course independent developers are.

So there's a fair amount of money out there for training, for example - now, people might say they're not interested in money for training, but if you think that taking your guys away, having a code jam and coming up with new ideas can be construed as training - it actually is - you might be able to get money to fund that, or overseas trips... it becomes quite useful.

We've done quite a lot of work over the last few years with the Technology Strategy Board - they've got a lot of money, over GBP 1 billion over three years - to give to companies in general for research... and a big part of that research is directed at the creative industries.

So it takes a little bit of work to figure out exactly how you're going to make best use of this money, but lots and lots of the work that we do at Introversion (and I think other independents do) is research. That money is there, and it can be tapped into. - we've got the R&D tax credits as well, so fill out your paperwork and make sure that you're claiming as much as you possibly can.

I've got some friends in other small businesses and they're not given anywhere near the level of support the games sector is given when it taps into some of these creative awards. That said, there's a big disparity between interactive entertainment, and the help that film and TV gets.

There was talk recently about the EU media grant, which is something that's been around for a long time - they match funding, and it's something that's really designed for making films. So you'll have a EUR 100,000 project - you'll find EUR 50,000 for and the EU team will match it with another EUR 50,000.

Now, they've exclusively said that this time around, interactive projects will only be funded if they're supporting an audio-visual component, so they've cut out the mainstream games industry completely from this grant programme. The games that they're talking about now are the Flash things that the BBC or Channel 4 put out to support their programmes.

I think that's very interesting, that the EU has taken this stance to draw an absolute line and say that games aren't going to be applicable to this grant scheme. I wonder if - and I hope that - it's because they're developing a programme in the background that's going to be more amenable to supporting videogame development across the EU?

But I suspect it could just be because, for one reason or another, they just don't want to support videogames - and I do agree that within the EU and UK we need to address the disparity between the money that TV and film gets and the support that we get.

I'm not quite as angry as some of the other developers out there, because I think I'm wily enough to extract money where possible, but I do think the government could help us out more.