Tiga Takeout: April 2007

Your Industry Needs You

What are we all going to do in May without E3? We have the answer - get involved with us and our debate with government! As forecast some months ago, there has been a lot going on in the political arena:

• The EU continues and has indeed extended their enquiry into the proposed film tax breaks the French government wants to offer to the video games sector. Tiga has submitted a response to the enquiry via the European Games Developers Federation.
• Eidos - the only global UK publisher - has announced a new studio in Montreal because of Canadian Tax breaks and called for the UK to do the same. Tiga has written to the Treasury on this issue.
• The Economist has published an article on why R&D needed to be redefined for modern knowledge based economies - you heard this from Tiga first, 3 years ago!
• DTI and DCMS Ministers held a summit with industry representatives from the boards of Tiga and Elspa to discuss what might be in the Creative Industries Green Paper when it is published in the summer.

Tigaâs Triple Play Strategy for the future success of the UK games industry is to a) improve the skills base and production best practice, b) find ways of perpetuating the flow of new IP from the UK and c) to marshalling the the full potential of technology. These three elements we believe will ensure the reputation and competitiveness of the UK games industry into the future. The government has to help us but we also need your involvement to dot the iâs and cross the tâs in the coming months.

Tigaâs focus at the summit was on the skills and IP elements of the Triple Play. The Ministers, however, seem fixed on their own agenda at present. They strongly pushed the idea of a âGames Academyâ for 16-17 year olds at FE level, and for a Games Council. We do not think these are bad ideas but that they are less of a priority than the skills and IP issue.

Tiga will continue to discuss these issues with the membership and to stay in touch with the Ministries through the Green Paper and subsequently legislative processes that lead to action. We have held consultations in Birmingham and Newcastle, and over the next months we will hold members meetings the three issues.

The first will be on Technology on June 5th. The last Middleware group meeting decided to rename the group, the Tiga Technology Group. There are a number of reasons for this, probably the most important being that the term âmiddlewareâ is too limiting and has unfortunate connotations. It also means that any non tech company interested in the agenda can be part of the group. Minutes of the Middleware group meeting can be found on the members side of the website in the archive.

On the events side, we will be trying a new format for this yearâs Content Market at Develop in July. There will be a number of private booths for hire by the hour for private pitches and a networking lounge, where a table and chairs can be reserved for the 2 days for a small fee. UKTI are working with us to bring US, Japanese and Korean and European publisher delegations to the event.

Edinburgh Interactive (EI) 07 (August 13-14th ) can reveal 2 excellent keynotes this year - Yves Guillemot of Ubisoft and Simon Nelson of BBC Vision. Dare to be Digital will run their âProtoplayâ event alongside the conference and there will also be a dayâs academic conference the day after EI. We will be cross promoting the two events.

Lastly, thanks to all respondents to the recent Tiga survey. Many suggestions are currently being actioned. The summary report of the results is also available on the members side of the website in the archive.