An opportunity for the British gaming industry

http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/12/22/an-opportunity-for-the-british-gaming-industry/An opportunity for the British gaming industry


December 22nd, 2008 | Anecdotal musing, Opinion

Britain has produced some of the best game development talent in the world. Partly because of our creative, inventive and anarchic national psyche. And partly because of Clive Sinclair who made a whole generation of schoolboys understand assembly level programming. So you will find expatriate Brits in just about every game development studio in the world.


And Britain once owned some of the best development and publishing companies in the world. Much of the development of gaming as an entertainment medium happened in Britain because of these companies. At one stage it looked like we were gunning to become the number one nation in the global game industry.


So lets look at the reality today. Most of the British development and publishing industry is foreign owned. And the industry is not growing anything like it is growing in other countries. After many years of holding the number three slot behind America and Japan we have now been relegated to fourth by the Canadians. But we won’t be fourth for long, soon we will be sixth as the video game industry ramps up massively in Korea and China.


And you all know what caused this national disaster, firstly some abysmal management (many of whom I have met and some I have worked with) and apathetic government (which I dealt with for years). The brilliant development talent was badly let down. Lions led by donkeys. Which is why so many of them voted with their feet and emigrated to lands where their talents are better appreciated. When I go to Linkedin people search and put Codemasters (where I once worked) as the company and Canada as the country it brings up a list of people who I once worked with in Warwickshire who now add value to the Canadian economy.


But despite the awfulness of the current situation there is a time of opportunity coming up that could reverse our fortunes. The first is that most other industries are in a dire state. Only gaming and government bureaucracy are thriving. So lots and lots of really talented people are being made redundant and coming onto the job market. Which means that we can pick and choose the best. We have an opportunity to replace amateur marketing and management with top level proven professionals with the ability to dynamically propel our industry forward. An influx of talent could be the blood transfusion that the withering body of British gaming needs.


The second opportunity is that this loathsome, ordurous, abysmal, execrable, abhorrent, incompetent Labour government will soon be gone. And with them the reliance on the City to be the engine of the British economy. The incoming Conservatives cannot possibly be as bad. They only need to be reasonably competent to be unimaginably massively better. And with them should come a more balanced view of the British economy. Especially bringing much needed emphasis to manufacturing and to knowledge based industries. And gaming is a knowledge based industry.


The British are brilliant at knowledge based industries. In fact much of what the City did was a knowledge based industry. It was just misapplied to high stakes gambling instead of to goods and services that people really want and need. And there are a plethora of world class knowledge based companies that prosper in Britain despite the best efforts of the loathsome, ordurous, abysmal, execrable, abhorrent, incompetent Labour government. Companies like ARM, Ricardo, Atkins, WPP and so many more. We have a fantastic heritage and foundation on which to build and any government would be foolish not to.


So who could make sure that we take advantage of these two massive opportunities? Who will be the catalyst to be at the centre of things and make sure that UK gaming prospers as it could and should? The answer of course could well be the trade associations, ELSPA and TIGA. But do they have the clout and intellectual horsepower to do the job? Time will tell. Really, as I have said many times before, we need a Games Council just as all the other creative industries have their Councils to promote them and look after their interests.


And will this happen, will the British game publishing and development step out of the gloom into a bright sunny upland of opportunity, jobs, profit and contribution to the national economy? Despite the fact that they very well could I doubt that it will happen. Firstly the amateur management are well entrenched and know their limitations, so they see anyone with competence as a threat. They don’t realise that the key to success is to always employ people better than yourself. And I see no evidence that the incoming Conservative government realise the economic importance of the games industry. Everything their senior members say about games is negative, misinformed and plain ignorant.




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And I have just written a knol about the family name Everiss:
http://knol.google.com/k/bruce-everiss/the-surname-everiss/2l81m4yln1pbt/42#

 

All I got from reading that was a call to vote conservative and that we need to take professionals into the industry from other arms of the UK work force.

The fact is that most of the English population understand (on some level) that Labour have spent too long in power and it is now time to swing power back in the other direction for a balanced, democratic society. All of Labours ideas have been used up and change is needed to lead the country forward.

Alongside this, there was a very similar article in Edge last month which was an interview with an agency, praising the uptake of workers from other specialist fields as being beneficial to the industry, however it was far more informative.

Sorry but on this one your too late to the punch, and it comes of as a rant more than anything constructive... what was your point again? It seems to be lost on me.

 

I thought we were behind the French, too.

 

The French games industry decamped en-masse to Canada.
However the Frech have realised their mistake and now value the games industry as culture as well as being economically important.

So they have government support and financial incentives.

An extract.
http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/02/06/time-to-learn-french/

The biggest game pubisher in the world is now a French company, Vivendi. The most impressive publisher of the last few years is a French company, Ubisoft............................

And when it comes to the current hot topic of free MMOs like Habbo and Runescape there is the French publisher Ankama Studio whose Dofus has three million players and which is now available in an English version.


There is more. To impress upon the industry that the French government is behind it, culture minister Christine Albanel visited Ubisoft in Paris in December. Here she told Yves Guillemot about the new tax credits for developing in France and how supportive they are of the French game industry. Remember that the French government give knighthoods to game developers.

 

What a strange rant. No political party in the UK have put forward any ideas about helping the games industry. There's absolutely no reason to think a conservative government will particularly benefit the UK games business.

It would seem then, that Eclectic's point is "I think a conservative government will be better", with a feeble wrapper to make it seem relevant.

This is a games industry board: take this stuff somewhere else.

 

What a strange rant.

 

I'm not sure you need another organisation. Having had experience of various organisations, such as RDAs, they cost a lot to run and often have relatively little output compared to that cost. The people in these organisations are often the last people who you'd want making decisions/lobbying too.

TIGA are working hard with the government and I have no reason to believe a "Games Council" would give us anything in addition.

I certainly don't figure how we're going to replace all the "amateur marketing and management". Who decides who is amateur and who isn't? I don't mean anything by this Bruce, but many people slag you off but you would view yourself as a real professional.

Also, many of us have dealt with the successful French companies and the experience of their management has been... interesting. Perhaps their success is as much down to intervention as management, where as UK companies got bought out (and fecked over by certain French companies lest we forget).

 

It's creative thinking like that, that has put you where you are today.

 

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