Tag: Games

Save the Games industry

Posted on June 29, 2017 by - News

gamestop-inside-930x618TIGA, the network for games developers and digital publishers and the trade association representing the video games industry, today published its Brexit and Beyond: Priorities for the UK Video Games Industry report.

TIGA’s report sets out a policy agenda for Government, Parliament and policy makers to consider as the UK negotiates its departure from the European Union.

Dr Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO, said that TIGA’s Brexit and Beyond: Priorities for the UK Video Games Industry, sets out a cogent, coherent and constructive agenda for ensuring the UK games sector is a leading player in an industry that is predicted to be worth approximately $100 billion by 2018.

“If the UK creates a favourable tax environment with an enhanced Games Tax Relief, improves access to finance and enables studios to access talent, then the UK video games industry will both survive and thrive in a post-Brexit world.”

The UK video games industry already contributes £1.2 billion to UK GDP. This contribution will increase with the right policy environment in place.

TIGA’s Brexit: Priorities for the UK Video Games Industry, said that if the government wants to keep things working it needs to create a favourable tax environment to encourage businesses to invest in the UK.

The Government should consider increasing the rate of Video Games Tax Relief from 25 to 27.5 or 30 percent and introduce a Video Games Investment Fund to provide pound for pound match funding up to a maximum of £200,000 to enable more studios to grow.

It would also be a good idea to maintain the UK Games Fund so that start-ups can access funding for prototypes.

The report called on the government to increase the amount of money that a company can raise via SEIS investment from £150,000 to £200,000 and ensure that EU workers already working in the UK are protected so that they can continue to work in the UK with the confidence that they are not going to be asked to leave the UK in the future.

The government needs to and clarify the status of EU workers who enter the UK following the EU referendum and prior to the UK’s exit from the EU. T

Meanwhile the government needs to negotiate a trade deal with the EU that avoids quotas, tariffs and other barriers to trade to maintain free trade in video games, negotiate trade deals with growing economies, examine the potential for incentivising more businesses to export through the tax system.

The UK Government should consider introducing arrangements for the conversion or extension of a EU trademark or registered community design to cover the UK.

It also needs to adopt and adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to ensure that companies based in the UK and doing business in the EU can continue to smoothly transfer information and data.

 

Sweden to give games sexism rating

Posted on November 18, 2014 by - News

558_L-narikoThe macho gaming world is about to be turned on its head by moves in Sweden to rate games on the basis of the way they treat women.

A video game trade group, inspired by the Bechdel Test, will study games’ portrayals of women and give each game a rating.

It is being seen as a precursor to a government-backed programme considering creating specials label for video games based on whether or not the games’ portrayals of women are sexist.

Inspired by the Bechdel Test, Vinnova is paying the Swedish video-game trade organisation Dataspelsbranchen approximately $36,672 to study the industry’s female characters.

“I do not know of any other project in the world asking this question, and of course, we want Sweden to be a beacon in this area,” said project manager Anton Albiin, who notes that it has not been determined whether all Swedish games would be graded on their treatment of women or whether only games with positive portrayals would receive special labels.

Only 16 percent of people working in Sweden’s growing, $935 million gaming industry are women, according to Dataspelsbranchen.

“Of course games can be about fantasy, but they can be so much more than this,” Albiin said. “They can also be a form of cultural expression — reflecting society or the society we are hoping for. Games can help us to create more diverse workplaces and can even change the way we think about thing.”

Moves to rate women as equals in games have been contested by male gamers who have aggressively been shouting down those wanting to reform the industry.

Consoles doomed says Doom man

Posted on July 30, 2014 by - News

doomJohn Romero, best known for his on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake says that consoles are being killed off by PCs and mobile consoles.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz   at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, Romero said that free-to-play is shaking up the industry.

He said that with a PC you have free-to-play and Steam games for five bucks,” said Romero. “The PC is decimating console, just through price. Free-to-play has killed a hundred top studios.

Romero’s games involve providing the first episode free and if play more, then you pay up.

He said that everyone was getting better at free-to-play design, and it is going to lose its stigma at some point. People will settle into the mindset that there is a fair way of doing it, and the other way is the “dirty way.”

Romero said that with this model there were some technological advantages of PC over consoles.

“With PCs if you want a faster system you can just plug in some new video cards, put faster memory in it, and you’ll always have the best machine that blows away PS4 or Xbox One,” he said.

Romero also thinks that VR headsets are unlikely to make a significant impact on the gaming world.

He said that before using Oculus, he had heard many vets in the industry saying this is not like anything they had seen before.

While he thought that it was amazing, Romero could not see a good future for VR right now.

“It encloses you and keeps you in one spot – even the Kinect and Move are devices I wouldn’t play because they just tire you out,” Romero said.

“VR is going away from the way games are being developed and pushed as they go back into multiplayer and social stuff. VR is kind of a step back, it’s a fad.”

May console sales worst in 13 years

Posted on July 4, 2013 by - News, Products

consolesMay seems to have been the worst month for console sales in 13 years, before the introduction of the PlayStation 2.

According to Wedbush Securities, sales of console games were just $175 million in the US, down 31 percent from $255 million last year. Wedbush was expecting a drop of 16 percent and sales around $216 million.

Unit sales of console software were down 26 percent, while ASPs were down 8 percent. This is hardly surprising, as new consoles are rolling out and few consumers are willing to buy software for old systems. However, PC game sales were even worse.

Sales of PC gaming software were down 84 percent year-on-year. Hardware sales were down 31 percent and the US spent only $96 million on PC games in May.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes sales should pick up in June, as several new AAA titles make their presence felt, but no big improvement is expected until next generation consoles start shipping in volume, reports wallstcheatsheat.com. Positive growth should return in September, as a number of new game releases are timed to coincide with the availability of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

New consoles are expected to have a massive impact on sales toward the end of the year and 2014 should be good as well. However, handheld consoles will face even more competition from mobiles and tablets.

HMV “fights losing battle” for quite a while

Posted on January 16, 2013 by - News, Opinions

HMV_NewcastleIllegal downloads, competition from online stores and legal streaming services have all contributed to HMV fighting a losing battle.

The once popular music store, which was a haven for 90s teens buying their first singles and albums, has become the latest casualty on the high street, announcing earlier this week that it was to go into administration.

The company, which has around 250 stores nationwide, made the announcement claiming that like-for-like sales were down 10.2 percent for the half year to 27 October and the Christmas period had not helped push profits up.

Trevor Moore, the former Jessops boss who took over as HMV CEO in August, said in a statement that the company had held discussions with its banks over the weekend but failed to agree on new terms for its debt.

“The board regrets to announce that it has been unable to reach a position where it feels able to continue to trade outside of insolvency protection and in the circumstances therefore intends to file notice to appoint administrators to the company and certain of its subsidiaries with immediate effect,” he said.

Michael Perry, a retail analyst at Verdict, said the chain had been “fighting a losing battle for some time,” pointing out that it hadn’t been able to compete with the likes of Amazon on either price or range, while grocers had also been slowly claiming market share.

“Illegal downloading has also had a part to play, particularly over the last few years as consumers look to save money. To many, the monetary benefits of downloading outweigh the risk of being caught, resulting in online piracy continuing fairly unabated,” he told ChannelEye.

“The same can also be said for legal streaming services such as Spotify or Netflix, which have largely negated the need to purchase physical media for many consumers.”

And the public are also suffering. Not only are there around 4,500 jobs at risk, but customers are left with vouchers that they can’t use.