I del.icio.us'd this article yesterday on my way up to meet some of the folks who'd been attending the various games industry conferences being held in London this week (read: at the bar). In it, the ever-enlightening Alf Hermida at the BBC reports on an address by Toby Barnes from tech think tank Pixel Lab, which argues that there's loads of cash out there for budding young games development companies, but few are willing (or have the knowledge) to take it. From the article:
"Just because films got money in the past, it is no use arguing that games should get the money now," he said.
Instead he blamed game developers for not doing enough to take advantage of the support already available.
As prices for production increase, resulting in more conservative projects and a hike for players at the pay point, it's important for independent and established developers to look to other sources of funding than the traditional publisher model - particularly as behemoths take control of indies and lockdown their creativity through un-healthy (and unethical) work demands.
At the minute, though, devs are too focussed on keeping their businesses alive than exploring untapped pots of cash. Furthermore, as Barnes suggested, there's a real gap in the knowledge in studios. Industry developement organisations like TIGA attempt to educate developers in issues like this, and regularly petition government bodies in conjunction with publisher representatives ELSPA. They're doing their darndest to let people know about things like research and development rebates and tax breaks. But the news from the conference suggests that this message isn't getting to where it counts.
I propose another further method of getting this information and getting the cash into the hands of developers, inspired by a trend which - mark my words - will be responsible for changing the nature of the industry from fanboy production to mainstream media: academic business development courses. There's been a proliferation of design, programming and art degrees that have been accredited over the past few years (up to 160 now, I believe), but the accounting, management and other top-level courses have been absent from the headlines, perhaps because they're perceived as less "sexy" than the creative level ones. Well, there's certainly more cash in 'em. Problem is, I can't find any in the UK. Can anyone help me?
