ESA, EMA, ESRB, IGDA, ELSPA, Tiga: On both sides of the Atlantic the alphabet soup is bubbling when it comes to video game industry trade groups.
But one member of Parliament thinks that the British video game industry would be better served with a single organization whose name people could remember.
Conservative MP Edward Vaizey (left), who has been a vocal supporter of the game biz, told IncGamers:
[ELSPA and Tiga should] merge and have a name everyone can understand. Two trade bodies for one industry, why?
The videogame industry has to up its game and tell people what they're about. There are all these great stories about videogames which never get into the press. [The two trade bodies - ELSPA and Tiga] [s]hould get together and talk to each other, and get the good press stories out there...
Vaizey also criticized the Labour Government's recent Change4Life campaign which suggested that playing video games would lead to an early death. The campaign was later revised.
GP: Vaizey may be a bit off the mark here. ELSPA represents game publishers, while Tiga represents game developers. While there are areas of mutual concern, the interests of the two groups are not always in synch.
Comments
Re: British MP: ELSPA and Tiga Should Merge
Yay, then they can sue Youtube tfor havign gamepaly videos and not payign for it.
Re: British MP: ELSPA and Tiga Should Merge
As GP insinuated, suggesting that developers and publishers share enough interests to be represented by the same organization is... a suggestion that one is not entirely in tune with things.
It should not need pointing out that Developers, Publishers, Retailers and Consumers are all in this for vastly different reasons (with the exception of the first three all profiting from the last) and as such should not be spoken for by the same people. Unless it's Valve speaking. Publishers in particular tend to clash with everyone else over various issues (such as DRM). A brief glance back through GP's archives will throw up a number of spats between these bodies. The only unification that would be of any use would be if the various organizations of these sorts were united internationally (or in some cases, even existed internationally - are you listening ECA? There is nothing more annoying than having Facebook et all constantly remind me to join the ECA for all these awesome benefits that actually I can't get because the ECA does not exist outside America. Sorry, bit of a rant there). But before that can really happen, you have to talk about various globalization issues and I just don't feel like going there right now.
Re: British MP: ELSPA and Tiga Should Merge
He's a politician, maybe -he- knows something we don't, that one governing body would be legally stronger or be more bureaucratically efficient.