UKIE's Michael Rawlinson
More detail on the ELSPA-UKIE transformation, and what we can expect in the future
Last night the organisation formerly known as ELSPA widened its remit and rebranded to UKIE - United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment.
Here, director general Michael Rawlinson explains more of the reasoning behind the change, talks about the importance of championing the business environment and how the organisation hopes to work with TIGA on an ongoing basis.
Fundamentally, the world of gaming has gone from boxed product on console and PC to any time, any place, anywhere. It's social, it's casual, it's mobile - and it's been demanded of us as an organisation to represent this industry.
The old ELSPA was stuck in the past - publisher-focused rather than industry-focused - so there was a need to move on.
It is a rich tapestry, and there is a challenge there to be able to offer something to the multi-national, huge corporations, all the way down to the micro, one- or two-man studio based out of a bedroom. However, I think we can do that - we can provide a voice for those people, we can provide support at the different layers. And hopefully we can bring the disparate parts together into different policy areas and activity areas, and provide a grid of offerings that meet everybody's needs.
Absolutely - now one in three people in the UK population is playing videogames, it's no longer a niche activity. And the business has matured as well, definitely.
There are a lot of challenges - in terms of child safety and all of the contact, conduct and content issues that Dr Tanya Byron referred to [in her government report in 2008], we do that through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. I sit on the executive board of that - there's a top table seat for the games industry, which is great, and there's a specific working group for our sector.
But we're also recognising that we need to be integrated into a broad industry group covering all the internet issues, a broad awareness group and a broad education group. We don't just want to be singled out and treated as a special case, we want to be integrated. That's a key issue there.
In terms of intellectual property, we're a strong supporter and participant in the Alliance Against IP Theft, again working across different industry sectors - well integrated at that level. And with business support commercially, we're building those services now and looking to provide networking events and business support - whether that's HR or legal, or marketing... skills that some of the newer entrants need.
We participate in ISFE, the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, which is a joining of the trade associations and pan-European publishers. There's certainly interest from our European trade association partners about the move we're making.
I think this will potentially come in time - but we're fortunate in the UK because there's a maturity of businesses working across the sector. Other countries can tend to be more polarised into publishers, and potentially one or two indigenous developers.
But the online businesses are predominantly residing here - so we have that advantage, I think.