TIGA is 10: Looking Back

What we'd generally talk about at those meals were what formats were coming through, and what publishers were coming through - and which of both were dying - plus where the sweet spot was that you wanted to be heading towards.

Yes - and what sort of projects publishers wanted to do, and where to pitch things. It was general chat that was mutually supportive. What TIGA does, while it gets a lot of publicity about tax breaks, there's a tonne of other stuff that the organisation does that probably isn't as heavily promoted because it's under the radar - like best practice, skills and training, how to get into the industry, and all these kinds of things.

One interesting thing was that publishers were always a bit worried that secrets would be traded at these dinners - and then if we had a trade association. The funny thing is that there's an enormous amount of respect and secrecy at the same time, when we all get together.

So we'll talk generally about the publishing community, and generally about deals - but usually without specifics. We won't mention titles, royalty rates or money - that never comes up. And we don't mention names.

We might mention that we've been having some success with Hasbro, that they seem like really decent guys. Or that we've not been having success with Publisher X, where we seem to be wasting our time. Those conversations would happen... but we'd never say "We managed to screw a 25 per cent royalty deal out of this particular guy," because that's the kind of trading information you don't want to give to other developers.

Publishers were always frightened that we were probably doing that - but actually we weren't. And we still don't, to this day. We never talk about what games we're pitching - and it's only when games are well through development, and probably even announced, that we'll mention them.

We're good friends with Chris and Jason, and even when they've been to our offices and vice versa, quite often we don't talk about what's in development. We might occasionally get a hint of what's going on, and we might get a hint of what they're doing, but actually we don't quiz each other - that would be seen as rude.

Absolutely - there are a lot of secrets we still keep from each other!

Well, getting developers to agree on anything in terms of policy, what we should be focusing on... we actually ended up getting the ear of legislators who wanted to talk to the development community as a whole, rather than individuals - or rather to companies that are foreign-owned and don't necessarily pay tax in the UK.

That's been very useful, and enlightening for me - to have been to Parliament to speak with politicians, and actually have some fairly clear and frank discussions with them about things that matter to the industry as a whole.

One of the first jobs that I had at TIGA - because at one of the first or second meetings, each person was allocated an area of responsibility - was to do with education. I had to find out whether TIGA should represent education, and was there anything that could be resolved.

I called a meeting - an email or press story went out - and we managed to get about 25 or 30 people interested, most of whom were lecturers at universities and turned up at the first meeting. That was quite an eye-opener, because originally nobody thought that would be something that would be of interest at all. One of the people that turned up was from an organisation called Skillset...

We've grown, for a start. We're significantly larger than we were originally, and I think we're more representative as a result of having a variety of different scales of company. As chair I've always been very aware that Rebellion is one of the larger independent games developers, and while we speak with a loud voice, the organisation is there to represent all games development companies - not just mine.

I've almost been in the situation of outvoting myself in the past, because something would benefit the bigger companies and not necessarily the smaller ones. We have to think of the health of the industry as a whole, so having more people get more involved has been a great thing.

One of the reasons why we, as the big companies, can look out for the small guys is because that was us not so long ago. We very much see through their eyes - the one-man bedroom coders, the guys that are just starting up, the guys who are ten people, or fifty or bigger.

Around that TIGA board table, pretty much everyone has done all that - and don't take that for granted. If you go to UKIE or any other trade association, the people that turn up at the table have usually popped up at that company a couple of years ago and they haven't been doing that type of thing their whole lives. They probably don't know the history, or grown up with it - because those industries are established.

Somebody who turns up from Ford, or something - he doesn't know what it was like when Ford was small... he wasn't alive! So how can he really say he understands the little guys, even if he's been there for 20 years?