Continue Highlights #4
Day Two, Part One
Day Two kicked off with something a little different, an open discussion and feeback session led by Rick Gibson of the British Games Institute. Several years ago, Rick noticed that games industry talent was draining out of the UK and away to North America. He, along with various other industry specialists, felt that a tax break for developers would help keep videogame talent in the country, and took the idea to policymakers, making the formal case for the importance of videogames culturally and economically. The introduction of videogame tax relief halted the overseas exodus and led to massive growth in the UK industry, although funding projects remains a challenge for UK developers. This forces companies to stay small and limits innovation and risk taking. Cancellation of key funding has only exacerbated this problem.
Outdated opinions of videogames persist amongst some policy makers. The BGI aims to challenge this thinking by uniting trade bodies and other industry groups to approach ministers. It aims to target three key areas, finance, skills and culture. To assist with finance, new government funding will be sought, which will include mentorship from experienced professionals, and a roadshow of recepients to help them achieve match funding. As BGI takes the stance that games are cultural artefacts, they non-commercial games would not be discounted and would only be subject to the same cultural test as for videogame tax relief. Skills will be developed through working with leading games development universities to fund projects that will fill skills gaps and develop online programs to help new studios learn best practise at a low cost. The BGI acknowledges that ideas around games as culture are slowly changing, but aims to accelerate this shift through a national festival roadshow to showcase games culture in its entirety outside of London.
Ultimately, the BGI aims to work in collaboration with existing organisations to develop co-funded games projects and share ideas and practices.
Taking an entirely different approach to the idea of collaboration, Marie Foulston of the V&A and the Wild Rumpus stressed the importance of developing DIY games events. Through a series of interviews with different event organisers, Marie offered an overview of the past, present and future DIY scene.
Andrew Dyce of Edinburgh’s We Throw Switches began “Games Are For Everyone” as a labour of love funded by all his other work. While there was no direct financial gain, many other opportunities arose through hosting the event.
Kerry Turner is based in Brighton and works for Unity, but also makes her own games and organises events and activities as part of Make Play Code. She was inspired by wanting to improve on things that didn’t quite work and also a little as a response to GamerGate in an effort to make gaming a better place for women. Marie highlighted Kerry’s willingness to look outside of games for inspiration too, modelling her coding sessions on skirt-making classes. (The idea being that everyone follows the same basic pattern together, puts their own small twist on it, and at the end will have something that is at least serviceable, if not mind-blowing!).
Jake Tucker and Thryn Henderson of Videobrains described themselves as a community support group for videogames. Attracting a mixed audience of players, researchers and developers, I was very sad to hear that Videobrains’ regular monthly talks will soon be coming to an end. This is completely understandable, as Jake noted that although the event now covers its costs and is occassionally able to pay its contributors too, it has simply become too time-consuming to run, and with members of the team dispersing, it had some to a natural end. Fortunately, many of Videobrains’ fantastic talks are available on YouTube, so make the most of them! Thryn suggested that for anyone wanting to run events of their own, allowing them to grow and develop organically is key.
Michael Bell of Cardboard Arcade spoke about how he received lots of interest from various groups and organisations asking him to bring the arcade to their events. He suggested that while money remains an issue, translating games for the general public is a greater challenge, as a lack of understanding of what games are and how they should be played persists. Michael also described the value of preparing Arts Council funding bids, because even on occassions where they were ultimately unsuccessful, the detailed planning and focus required was always hugely beneficial to the project as whole. Michael’s tip for wouldbe DIYers was that the majority of his income came from add-on sales rather than the events themselves, and this is something event organisers should prepare for.
Finally, Marie invited Patrick Ashe to the stage to discuss his work on Beta Public. This unique event explores crossovers between videogames and other art forms. Beta Public takes over an entire theatre building and fills it with digital and non-digital games, performances, talks and demonstrations. The promotional posters specifically avoid using traditional games or theatre imagery in order to attract a wider audience. Funding comes largely from ticket sales, meaning the event is largely self-sustaining. Patrick’s tip for DIYers was to avoid ‘parachuting in’ to areas with ideas, but instead to see what local devs and organisers are up to and work with them to create something.
If you’d like to tell us about your own DIY videogame events, please let us know in the comments below, or on Twitter @the_nvf.
