North Carolina House Bill 1973, also known as the Keep North Carolina Competitive Act, features a slew of incentives for interactive entertainment developers.

The Bill, which passed the state’s House and has been referred to the Senate, features a provision that would bestow tax credits of 15% upon a qualifying production that cost at least $50,000 to produce. Additionally, if a company creates at least 20 new full-time jobs during a 24-month period, and sustains those positions for three years, that company would be eligible for a tax credit of $5,000 per new job.

The Bill also contains provision for tax benefits for datacenters, major industrial facilities and for general production companies. Representatives Bill Owens (D), Pryor Gibson (D), William Wainwright (D) and Harold Brubaker (R) are the Bill’s primary sponsors.

Develop is reporting that “one of the biggest game companies in the world" used strong arm tactics to help kill tax breaks for UK videogame developers.

The unnamed company in question reportedly “spoke to well-placed parliament allies to dissuade any legislative measures.” Why would one company lobby so tirelessly against a measure that would help the industry as a whole? Develop wrote:

This company had apparently viewed game tax relief as a measure that would have given the UK an unfair advantage over other nations.

An unfair advantage? That phrase doesn’t make much sense considering the UK has fallen into fourth place (by some accounts) in terms of number of game developers, trailing Japan, the U.S. and Canada.

The UK’s emergency budget, designed to balance the region’s books within five years, does not contain any measures for providing tax relief or incentives for local game developers.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne instead opted to provide more wide spread tax incentives that may help a wider selection of businesses, instead of the “poorly targeted” aid for interactive creators.

Industry groups TIGA and The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), who had both long championed Games Tax Relief, were not happy with the news.

Saying he was “extremely disappointed,” ELSPA Director General Michael Rawlinson, stated, “Our industry will be rightly puzzled as to how tax breaks can be lauded before an election, only to be seen as ‘poorly targeted’ and scrapped just 6 weeks later.”

Game maker Silicon Knights is teaming up with McMaster University, Mohawk College and the Art Gallery of Hamilton to create an $11 million dollar institute for interactive digital media.

Expected to open sometime in 2011, the group is calling the venture “Eight,” a name meant to canonize interactive media as “the eighth major art form after music, poetry, dance, sculpture, painting, architecture and cinema,” according to the Hamilton Spectator.

The paper also outlined what the institute hopes to accomplish:

Though the fine details are still in play, the groups are expected to collaborate on developing games and work on technical and creative problems, such as making games look more real, while also training students to work in the field.

Thanks in part to the 2009 Johnny Depp movie Public Enemies, the state of Wisconsin has scaled back tax incentives that were aimed at luring film, television and videogame makers to the Badger State.

Funding for the Department of Commerce-backed program has been reduced to $500,000 per year, while in earlier years there was no limit placed on incentives. The budget thresholds for eligible productions were also lowered however, to $50,000 for film projects and $100,000 for game developments.

While more aggressive incentives did manage to lure the Public Enemies production to Wisconsin, after doling out $4.6 million in tax credits to the production, it was estimated that the filming of the movie only brought in $5 million in local economic activity, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Commerce Department spokesman Tony Hozeny said, “The bang for the buck just wasn’t there.”

While hopes for UK tax breaks for game developers may be fading, industry groups and developers aren’t giving up without a fight.

Trade association TIGA, along with representatives from Activision, recently met with MP’s Don Foster, Jim McGovern and Stewart Hosie to continue their full court press for tax relief. It’s been speculated that tax relief for makers of interactive entertainment may have to take a back seat to more important measures needed to prop up Britain’s floundering economy.

TIGA Chief Richard Wilson stated:

While Canada keeps rolling along and introducing tax breaks designed to lure more developers to the Great White North, optimism for similar measures across the pond in the UK appears to be fading.

An article on GamesIndustry.biz notes that, in the UK’s gloomy economic environment, MP’s Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt are “facing up to the realities of convincing the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government to help fund the videogame sector.” Hunt indicated in a recent speech that he would still “love” to introduce the tax breaks, but that he still needed to convince members of the government.

“Political insiders” also told the publication that announcing any tax breaks for developers at the current time would be “’impossible’, and tantamount to ‘political suicide’”.

Thanks in large part to lobbying from the eight-person B.C. Interactive Task Force, which represents 30 local videogame makers, the Canadian province of British Columbia is now the proud purveyor of shiny new tax credits for interactive developers.

The Interactive Digital Tax Credit was passed by local legislature late last week and provides a 17.5 percent tax credit for labor on projects commencing after August 31. To qualify, productions must feature two out of the following three components: text, sound or images.

While the tax credit is an improvement, the Vancouver Sun notes that the percentages “pale” when compared to those offered by other Canadian provinces:

Nova Scotia offers 50 per cent of labour and up to 25 per cent of total productions costs. Manitoba offers 40 per cent of labour, the same percentage as Ontario, which also offers 40 per cent of marketing and distribution costs. Quebec, B.C.'s main Canadian competitor, offers up to 37.5 per cent of labour.

An in-development game that has players exploring vaginas and other orifices of the human body may be a little too hot to handle for Xbox Live Arcade.

Zombie Cow is currently working on Privates for the Xbox and PC platforms and is creating the title with funds from the UK's Channel 4, which plans to market it as an educational title reports Seattle PI. Zombie Cow’s website describes the title as, “a funky little game about tiny little condom-hatted marines going right up peoples’ rude areas and shooting all the nasty chompy things that tend to live there…”

An Xbox spokesperson sent the website a note indicating that the title had not been submitted for review as of yet, but that XBL guidelines “prohibit the publication of strong sexual content.” Zombie Cow’s Dan Marshall indicated that the game is based on the British government’s Personal, Social and Health Education guidelines and is “… essentially aimed at teenage boys.”

Namco Bandai Partners Vice President Olivier Comte has called for a worldwide summit of game companies in order to address the price of games and to explore new business models.

Speaking to MCV, Comte noted that other types of media have more than one way to procure income; music has physical media sales and live events, while movies are similar, with disc-based offerings in addition to the cinema. Games, meanwhile, “… just have one model, the sale of the product either as a box or a digital download. So we need to think about how we can develop a secondary business model.”

Comte continued:

I am convinced that in the future we must change the price of video games – they’re too expensive for the audience. With the cost of development and the retail margins, £40 (approximately $58.00 U.S.) is a fair price [to us], but for the consumer it is too much.

As part of the new UK Conservative/Liberal Democrat leadership coalition, Prime Minister David Cameron has appointed Conservative MP Ed Vaizey (pictured) as Minister of Culture, a move that drew kudos from the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA).

 Vaizey, labeled “extremely positive” in terms of his relation to the game industry in a pre-election report card, also previously stated that a Conservative government would delay tax breaks for game developers, as it would need to focus on correcting the UK’s stumbling economy first. Whether a Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, which no one saw coming, would change Vaizey’s thought process is anybody’s guess.

ELSPA “warmly applauded” Vaizey’s appointment, calling him, “one of the few politicians to have shown a comprehensive understanding of the video games industry…"

The Georgia Game Developers Association (GGDA) is throwing its support behind language in a new Bill that would provide a tax credit of up to $50,000 for individuals that invest in “early stage, innovative, wealth-creating businesses.”

The GGDA believes that Section 2 of HB 1069 would help be advantageous for Georgia-based startups in the videogame and digital media development industries. The Bill, which passed the House and now needs only Governor Sonny Perdue’s signature, would allocate $10 million dollars annually for the program if enacted.

The measure also has the strong backing of Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, who penned a letter (PDF) to Technology Association of Georgia members encouraging them to contact the Governor to indicate their support of the legislation.

As the gaming population continues to get older—and the chances increase for acquiring disabilities—the onus is on game makers now more than ever to provide accessible games.

This is the conclusion offered by a newly released white paper from the AbleGamers Foundation and 7-128 Software entitled Gaming on a Collision Course (PDF). The report uses 2009 demographic data from the ESA to illustrate that about half of all gamers were between the ages of 18 and 49. A full 25% of the gaming population is over 50 years old however, and the median age of U.S. gamers is on the rise, from 30 in 1995, to 33 in 2007 and 35 in 2008.

The white paper states, “If the gaming industry does not realign their priorities to include accessible gaming, then a collision will happen in the next five years. The effects would be destructive to the game makers both in terms of lost sales and lost customers. The time to start making more games accessible is now.”

Any way you slice it, the Humble Indie Bundle being offered by Wolfire Games is a smashing success.

The pay-whatever-you-want bundle includes the indie games World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture. All the titles are DRM-free and will run on Mac, Windows and even Linux. Additionally, a portion of the proceeds goes to the Child’s Play charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). By default donations are split evenly amongst the two, but users can even control how much of their purchase price goes to each organization.

Given that taxes plays a major-role in the ability of states and countries to lure videogame developers, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at results from a recent KPMG study (PDF) into the tax competitiveness of 95 cities and countries around the world.

The guide rated the locales using a Total Tax Index (TTI), which was described as a measure of “the total taxes paid by corporations in a particular location, expressed as a percentage of total taxes paid by corporations in the U.S.” This methodology uses the U.S. as a benchmark with a score of 100.0*.

The TTI rankings placed Mexico first among countries, with a 59.9 score, indicating that total tax costs in the country are 40.1 percent lower than in the U.S. Canada came in second place, followed by the Netherlands, Australia, the UK, the U.S., Germany, Italy, Japan and France.

Brandon Boyer (pictured) has been named Chairman of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which organizes the Independent Games Summit (IGS) in addition to the IGF.

Boyer co-founded indie-games-focused website Offworld.com (a part of the Boing Boing network), where he is currently a Contributing Editor, and in his new role will be charged with overseeing submission and judging operations, providing community outreach and support, and helping to shape the structure and continued growth of the IGF.

Boyer has served as judge for the IGF, which takes place at each year’s game Developers Conference (GDC), since 2007. He replaces Simon Carless who moves up to become UBM TechWeb’s Global brand Director.

If you have been wondering what happened to Bruce Shelley after Microsoft’s execution of Ensemble Studios, we have the answer for you today: he's making stock trading more fun, apparently. One of the founding fathers of Ensemble and a co-creator of the Age of Empire series, Shelley is now serving as an advisor to Kapitall, an online investing company based in SoHo, NYC and Seattle, WA.

So what the hell is Shelley doing? He is advising Kapitall on its next generation investment platform. This platform consist of user friendly research tools, avideo game-like design, and a drag & drop touch interface.

Kapitall founder and CEO, Gaspard de Dreuzy, says that Bruce Shelley's experience in the gaming industry will be invaluable to the company as it adds meta-gaming features to its "unique platform." Kapitall was founded in March 2008 by a team of designers, developers and technologists from companies that include Apple, Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley, ShareBuilder, Pearson, and Electronic Arts.

Learn more at backstage.kapitall.com.

The co-founder of Blitz Games Studios believes that pre-owned games are a bigger threat to developers than piracy.

Andrew Oliver told Develop that the “damage done” by used games sales would push publishers even more towards digital downloads. Oliver cited a figure that original copies of games are traded in up to four times to claim that such a practice effectively cuts publisher and developer royalties to such an extent that “the money going back up the chain is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago.”

Oliver added, “I understand why players do this, games are expensive and after a few weeks of playing you’ve either beaten it, or got bored of it so trading it back in to help pay for the next seems sensible when people are short of cash.”

If your dream is to study how to make videogames while living in a mild climate and sampling good wine, then information from the DigiPen Institute of Technology that it will soon be opening a campus in Spain is good news indeed.

The Redmond, Washington-based school for videogame development plans to open a campus in the coastal town of Bilbao, Spain this fall. The Spanish location will offer a Bachelor of Science in Real Time Interactive Simulation and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Production Animation.

DigiPen founder Calude Comair stated, “The opening of our campus in Spain is yet another proof point of how fast this industry is growing and how important it is to provide a workforce that can drive forward innovation and creativity in the computer technologies field.”

The Spanish campus will be DigiPen’s second outside of the U.S.; it opened a Singapore branch in 2008.

While Canada is now the world’s third-largest home to videogame development, trailing only the U.S. and Japan, one Canadian province is feeling a bit ostracized.

Edmonton, Alberta is home to BioWare, but despite the successful developer’s presence, “the industry has basically stalled” in the region, states the Edmonton Journal, as “major video-game firms have opted to expand elsewhere, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lavish studios and sprawling campuses.”

Canada’s game creators are increasingly concentrated in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, areas “where growth has been fuelled by handsome tax credits and other forms of public support.”

Even BioWare seems more focused now on increasing staff at its Austin, Texas and Montreal locations.

The piece’s author offers:

UK game industry group TIGA believes that a soon-to-be-enacted tax break in Florida for game developers raises the impetus for a similar measure in the United Kingdom.

The group stated that the Florida legislation “confirmed the imperative” for competing legislation across the pond, with TIGA chief Richard Wilson stating, “The UK games industry wants to compete on a level playing field with games businesses elsewhere in the world.”

Wilson added, “Until we have TIGA’s Games Tax Relief implemented in the UK our video games industry will be at a serious competitive disadvantage.”

Florida’s plan would boost tax incentives to 20.0 percent of a qualifying production’s total budget.

Proving that BitTorrent technology isn’t just for Internet pirates, an overwhelming response to the free download of a new game is forcing a developer to turn to the file-sharing technology as a replacement for its own overloaded proprietary download system.

MekTek is currently offering up MechWarrior 4 for download through its website, this after 100,000 customers brought down its MTX system, and website, over the weekend. The developer, according to TorrentFreak, is now preparing a release of the free game via BitTorrent, once the new version makes its way through MekTek’s beta team.

While noting that other game companies have turned to BitTorrent technology in the past, including Electronic Arts, who used it to distribute the beta for Warhammer Online, Torrent Freak offered:

Boycotts of Arizona in reaction to the state’s controversial immigration law SB-1070 are having a trickle-down effect on a lot of businesses, including a local indie videogame developer.

Mojo-Bone Software Studios is on the cusp of producing its biggest title to-date, but the company is now having trouble luring the 30 cast members needed for the production to Arizona, according to AZ Family.com.

A South Australian politician fears that downloadable gambling games might fall into the hands of children.

Senator Nick Xenophon (pictured) is taking aim at Australian-based Pokie Magic, which creates mobile and PC games based on slot machines (or pokies). Xenophon, according to AdelaideNow, stated, “If they are an Australian corporation, then we can legislate to stop this.”

“Children will play these applications thinking they cannot lose when in reality you cannot win,” said the Senator, continuing, “We need an overhaul of our laws because the technological world has moved so quickly our laws are out of date and we need a national approach to this.”

The Florida House has passed SB 1752, the companion bill to HB 697 (which previously passed early last month), okaying legislation that would provide $242.0 million in tax incentives to film, television and digital media productions within the state over the next five years.

The measure passed the House 115-0 and is now just a pen stroke away from becoming law, which appears to be a mere formality, as Florida Governor Charlie Crist praised the bill, stating, “I applaud the Florida Legislature for supporting a bill that provides high-wage jobs for Floridians and aids in the diversification of Florida’s economy.”

Digital media producers within the state would be eligible for tax breaks of 20.0 percent. It’s expected that the legislation could induce up to $1.2 billion in direct spending within the Sunshine State.

In an open letter Apple CEO Steve Jobs came out swinging yesterday, saying that his company's devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad) will not support Adobe's Flash. Jobs says that Adobe has characterized its decision to not use Flash as "being primarily business driven" because Apple wants to protect its App Store, but says his decision is based on technology issues.

He claims that Flash is not a open platform (calling them "100 percent proprietary"), drains the battery of mobile devices (decoding video in software uses too much power), has reliability, security and performance problems, and offers no support for touch devices. But the most entertaining comment was this one:

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) trade association has announced the addition of four publishers to its ranks.

Los Angeles-based Nexon America, Inc., O-Games, Inc. of San Carlos, California, Boulder, Colorado’s Realtime Worlds and Glendale, California-based Ignition Entertainment are the latest ESA members.

Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA, stated, “We look forward to representing them as we continue our work on the key public policy issues facing the entertainment software industry, including piracy, intellectual property rights and freedom of speech.”

Thirty-eight Infinity Ward employees have filed a lawsuit against Activision, alleging breach of contract, violation of California labor code and breach of f the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

G4 reports that the group is seeking a “large amount of unpaid royalties,” which a lawyer for the group pegged at between $75.0 and $125.0 million. Attorney Bruce Isaacs told G4, “Activision has withheld most of the money to force many of my people to stay, some against their will, so that they would finish the delivery of Modern Warfare 3.”

In a legal document, the Infinity Ward group claimed that Activision withheld property in order to keep the workers “hostage.”

GamesLatest series of articles on game development in the Middle East previously focused on Syria. The latest installment takes us on a tour of game makers in Lebanon and Jordan.

One of the first Lebanese-developed games was 2003’s Special Force, which focused on the fight between Hezbollah and Israel over occupying forces in Lebanon. The article claims that Hezbollah was taken with the game, and adopted it as its own, eventually merging it into its propaganda machine. While Hezbollah’s adoption of the game caused it to be banned in some Middle East countries, it did call attention the game, allowing the developers to create a sequel.

North Carolina, while home to quite a few game developers, does not offer tax incentives to those creating interactive entertainment, which may be costing the state in its attempts to entice more companies to take up residence within its borders.

A piece in the NewsObserver offers this sentiment after attending the recently concluded Triangle Game Conference in Raleigh. State Representative (D) Pryor Gibson (pictured) has previously sponsored bills that would grant 15.0 percent tax breaks to interactive developers, but that legislation “has gone nowhere,” and the outlook for such a bill passing in the future is bleak, due to the state’s “budget crunch.”

Gibson doesn't appear to have given up though, and is said to be working “with fellow legislators on a bill for the coming session that will be attractive to video-game companies looking to expand and that will help retain existing businesses.”