TIGA Turns 10

Political Campaigning

Firstly, we have transformed the industry's profile in Government and Parliament. A few years ago video games were largely ignored by politicians but now we are convincing them to develop positive policies for our sector.

TIGA has strengthened the videogames industry's political influence. Over the last three years TIGA has instigated the creation of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Computer and Video Games Industry in the Westminster Parliament. We have championed the sector's interests in meetings with ministers, MPs and MSPs, published research papers about our industry and given evidence to parliamentary committees. We changed the political weather by single handedly persuading the last Labour Government to introduce Games Tax Relief in the Budget and by convincing all four of the UK's main political parties to publicly back this measure before last year's General Election – and we can do it again. Although the Coalition Government dropped Games Tax Relief in June we have ensured that the issue has been raised regularly in Parliament, including at Prime Minister's Question Time.

Political campaigning is essential, as without it the Government will simply go back to ignoring our sector. It is not enough to simply sit on the sidelines and hope the Government will recognise the potential of our sector. Politicians are very good at promising the earth and delivering nothing. It is only through consistent and passionate campaigning that we can secure the right conditions to help our industry prosper.

Raising the Industry's Profile

Secondly, we have dramatically raised the profile of our industry in mainstream media. Back in 2000 the videogames industry and developers were rarely, if ever, mentioned in mainstream media, and if games were mentioned the stories where usually extremely negative. TIGA has transformed the way that the mainstream media perceives the games industry. Today we are achieving high levels of positive coverage about the UK industry. Last year, TIGA represented the industry on the BBC Politics Show, Sky News, ITV national news, Scottish Television news, CNBC, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live and in every broadsheet newspaper in the UK.

Services to Help our Members Grow

Thirdly, we have become an infinitely more innovative and professional organisation: TIGA beat many larger competitors to win the accolade of 'Trade Association of the Year 2010' (awarded by the Trade Association Forum) and we have achieved Investors in People accreditation. TIGA was also named as a finalist in the Chartered Management Institute's Awards in the category of 'The Best Organisation of the Year Award (SME)'.

We are building a movement that developers and the games industry can trust to deliver valuable services and to fight for the interests of games developers.

TIGA offers services that benefit our members commercially. As the only accredited trade association in the sector, we work with UKT&I to help developers who want to exhibit at overseas tradeshows. We have secured grants from UKT&I to enable 49 games businesses attend overseas trade shows. We secure discounts for our members to lower their operating costs. Today discounts are available from 20 key industry service providers, including motion capture, accountancy and legal services. We have recently launched a new Self Publishing Service to help developers who are moving into publishing. In this area we offer free events, commission regular research and we are currently producing a self-publishing information booklet to help our members. TIGA is also working with Jagex to enable start-up developers to publish their games.

We run a free PR service for our members to maximize their media profile, we also run regular networking and speaker events. TIGA is committed to building links between the games industry and other sectors. Since 2009 we have been running a programme called Creative Industry Switch and have set in motion many commercial collaborations between games developers and other creative sectors. Our Education Exchange programme is fostering collaboration between academia and the industry.

Producing quality research and policy documents is a very important area of our work. We collect quality information to enable our membership to benchmark their investment in workforce development, compare their staffs' qualification attainment levels and assess their involvement with educational institutions against industry norms. We carry out research in the fields of education and training as well as business performance and new technology in order to inform its public policy objectives.

TIGA's services are making a difference for our members: our trade support work is helping developers do business overseas, our networking events are bringing people in the industry together and our Creative Industry networking programme is creating business opportunities for developers with other business sectors.

Looking Forward

TIGA is the only trade association with the vision to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business. Our overriding priority is to serve the interests and needs of UK games businesses, organisations and individuals. Our commitment to UK developers is absolute.

We have exciting plans for 2011. TIGA will provide best practice advice on self-publishing, launch a number of new services to help our members, strengthen links with other creative sectors, support more businesses at tradeshows, organise more networking events, open TIGA up to individual members, champion the industry's profile in the media and intensify our political activities. Above all, TIGA will campaign to advance the interests of game developers and strive to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business.