A piece up on The Sixth Axis website poses the question, “What if: The Tories Win” and goes about breaking down what a Conservative Party win might mean for the UK developers and gamers.

The article kicks off by describing the ways politicians can shape gaming, including tax breaks for developers, deciding how games are rated and influencing the speed of Internet connections.

Ed Vaizey, Shadow Culture Minister is the focus of most of the piece, with the author offering “WIN” or “FAIL” grades for Vaizey’s inferred stances or public remarks on topics ranging from integration of videogames into the UK Film Council (a “WIN”), ways to help grow UK game development (a “FAIL”), developments in broadband (a “WIN” and a “FAIL”) and Internet piracy (a “WIN”).

Details on the “WIN” grade for involving the UK Film Council in games:

One of the best ideas from the Conservatives is to integrate video games in to the UK Film Council, a body that looks after the economic, cultural and educational aspects of the UK film industry both here and abroad. The council also distributes Lottery money to finance new independent UK films and I would assume they would to the same for games. This could lead to a more PSN and XBLA games.

The author finishes with an overview of the Shadow Culture Minister:

He appears to be enthusiastic about gaming and he does not assume that anyone who plays GTA IV will go and chainsaw a nearby prostitute – this is a very good thing. The bit where he understands gaming does not turn you in to a psycho, not the chainsawing of prostitutes.

|Image via LOLMart|

The latest in a wave of gaming addiction centers has opened its doors in the UK.

Established in 1974, and located in the English town of Weston-super-Mare, Broadway Lodge has expanded its treatment repertoire to include game addiction, employing a 12-step abstinence program to help patients kick the habit. Group therapy and “therapeutic” tasks such as cleaning and vacuuming are also used in treatment, but apparently baking cookies is not part of the mix.

The center’s Chief Executive Brian Dudley tells the Telegraph that he thinks game addiction is a widespread problem, “I would stick my neck out and say between five and ten per cent of parents or partners would say they know of someone addicted to an online game.”

Broadway Lodge Counselor Peter Smith added:

It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state. You have a relationship with characters in the game that give you an artificial feeling, created by your body's natural endorphins, when you have killed some monster or solved a problem.

As part of yesterday’s London Games Conference, Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey called for sweeping proposals to aid the UK’s videogame development industry.

Vaizey cited research that indicated the UK games market could shrink by 16.5 percent over the next five years, in turn losing some 1,700 jobs. Among the reforms he called for, via MCVUK, were:

• Look at extending the remit of the Film Council to cover the video games sector to give video games the national voice they need and deserve.
• Recognise that high technology companies in the UK face specific challenges when it comes to raising finance and attracting venture capital.
• Give the sector the support it needs to succeed and expand in the global economy.
• Stimulate investment in superfast broadband, vital to the future growth of the sector, through the telecoms regulatory structure.

In a speech at the conference, Vaizey said the UK had lost 44 studios already, and risked losing its current ranking of third in the world (behind America and Japan) in terms of game development. He continued:

Global competition is incredibly fierce, and high development costs in the United Kingdom are slowly killing the industry. Given what is happening, you would expect our Government to be acting urgently. After all, many others are.  Unfortunately, the UK is falling far behind.

Vaizey stopped short of endorsing a tax-break for developers, encouraging studios to “think more widely than that,” noting that, “First things first, we need to get the public finances under control by tackling our spiralling deficit.”

So, is Vaizey a gamer?

I am not a gamer. I have just got myself a Wii. So I am getting involved. It’s been the single greatest pleasure of my job to discover and learn about an industry I knew little about before this job.

MediaCityUK, a sprawling 200-acre development in Greater Manchester, England may be the future home of a videogame development center.

As part of the Digital Britain report, the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) commissioned a feasibility study into such a move, proposing “a model of support which combines usability testing, applied research, internship training and public interface components in a single facility to be based at Media City” reports Crain’s Manchester Business.

While the project could begin as early as next summer, there appears to be some opposition to the project, including the “the political furore that such a move could cause in Liverpool,” home to a good number of game developers already.

Eric Hobson, CEO of developer Connect2media Ltd, expressed his feeling about the proposed project:

Having a building, whether it's in Manchester or Liverpool, isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in getting a company to stay in the UK rather than relocate abroad. What would make a difference is getting graduates through the door so they can get real experience of the industry and the industry can get experience of the graduates.

Matmi Managing Director Jeff Coghlan, whose firm makes viral games, agreed with Hobson, “The problem with our business isn't the buildings, it's with things like recruiting graduates, the educational standards and quality of graduates and tax.”

The BBC is scheduled to move five departments to MediaCityUK in 2011.

In light of France officially approving a tough, three-strike law against illegal downloaders, the European Parliament has exorcised an amendment to its Telecoms Package that would have made it more difficult to disconnect pirates from the Internet.

France’s “Hadopi” law was passed last week following a revision which added a provision that a judge must approve disconnecting a user from the Web. A first offense will result in an email, while a second infringement will result in a letter being sent to the person who illegally downloaded material. A third strike would result in disconnection, now subject to a judge’s ruling.

Amendment 138 to the EU Telecoms Package was dropped, meaning that “individual countries would be able to ask internet service providers to remove users deemed to be persistent pirates without needing a prior court order,” writes the BBC, which believes that this is a lead up to the UK introducing its own disconnection policy for pirates next month.

Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan thinks that any legislation is too slow to do much to affect pirates, “Technology just moves quicker. Already we are seeing around 20 different alternatives to peer-to-peer piracy.”


|Thanks Hreinn, Image via DeviantArt|

The British Board of Film Classification has bestowed an 18 (Adult) rating upon Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City, the bundle which features both The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and The Damned.

In doing so, their report contains a few spoilers from both games, which we won’t detail here. The BBFC noted that “at least four uses of very strong language that crop up in some of the cut scenes” bounced the rating up from 15 to 18. “Strong sex and violence and hard drug use” also contributed to the higher mark.

There is also sex scenes, which are “quite strong, but always masked and the characters concerned are invariably fully clothed (no nudity).” Portrayals of cocaine, in addition to references to drug trafficking, are also spread liberally throughout the game.

Additionally:

“There are blood spurts as people are shot and stabbed etc. and pools of blood form on the ground. However, there is never any discernible injury detail and it is not possible to inflict post-mortem injuries, although there is considerable ragdolling as dead bodies are shot.”

Click through to see the whole BBFC report, and don’t worry, sections that contain spoilers must be expanded to be read.

|Via EuroGamer|
 

Activision’s latest entry in the Call of Duty series has received an 18 rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).

MCVUK notes that all the previous entries in the series were rated wither BBFC 15 or PEGI 16+. The only statement made in the BBFC’s rating memo was that the game “contains strong bloody violence.”

In related news, it appears the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 will no longer be the beneficiary of dedicated servers. A EuroGamer story states that developer Infinity Ward will roll out a new proprietary service, called IWNet, which will focus on matchmaking.

This news served to irritate PC-based fans of the series, who immediately started an online petition demanding dedicated servers. At the time of this post, there were more than 96,000 signatures on the petition.

Update:  A 13-page thread on the Infinity Ward forums details the cancellation of many pre-orders for the game by those upset over the lack of dedicated server option for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2.

A sampling of comments:

I also cancelled my preorder. I've got better things to spend my money on than that. A great Singleplayer? that's no comfort to me. -.-

I work at EB games in a shopping center here in Australia. We got hit with an onslaught today, 193 total preoders for Modern warfare 2 on PC, today alone we lost 78!

Four of my co-workers went to GameStop at lunch yesterday to cancel their pre-orders. They said the guy working told them that there had been a slow but steady stream of people coming in to cancel pre-orders throughout the morning.

And, just to be fair:

I walked into my local game store and... ...went ahead and paid for MW2 in full after putting $5 down on it a couple of months ago. You people that are canceling are going to miss out on a great game.

Update 2: Infinity Ward developer Robert Bowling has taken to his blog in an attempt to further explain/clarify some aspects of the online experience PC users will face.


Image via Cheezburger.com

A lack of fiscal autonomy could affect Scotland’s bid to stop Ireland from poaching game development companies.

While Sir Gerry Robinson previously proposed that Ireland try to lure Scottish developers with a five-year tax holiday, Michael Russell, Scottish Minister for Culture, External Affairs and Constitution, lamented to Inc Gamers that Scottish Parliament does not have the ability to alter its own tax structure, making it difficult to entice companies to stay. Russell hopes to secure full fiscal powers from the UK in order to “respond to the needs of our industry."

Despite the competition, Russell said Scottish developers were opting to stay put:

I am pleased that many companies that are based here are choosing to stay here, despite the financial incentives that might be on offer elsewhere.  We are committed to supporting them and creating the infrastructure to enable to them to thrive.

TIGA, the UK trade association for game developers, continues to lobby for tax breaks throughout the region.

Big brother may or may not be watching, but a new form of interactive entertainment will allow participants to leverage Britain’s 4.0 million plus closed circuit cameras in a bid to catch criminals and win money.

According to the Daily Mail, Internet Eyes is scheduled to launch next month and has already drawn the ire of civil rights groups, who worry the activity could lead to civil rights abuses.  One member of the opposition, Charles Farrior, labeled it “an appalling idea,” and worried it would create a “snooper’s paradise.”

Those watching cameras—in real-time—will be able to click a button every time they witness something they deem suspicious. Then, a message will be relayed to a camera operator, along with a still image from the camera. The operator will decide whether or not to take action and will notify the “player” if a crime has taken place or not.

Those participating will be blocked out after three incorrect alerts in a month, though additional alert opportunities can be purchased. As a further safeguard, actual locations of the cameras will not be known to those watching at home.

The article notes that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras—one for every 14 inhabitants.

The Irish government thinks highly of the game development industry in Scotland. So much so that they are considering offering tax breaks to developers to lure them in an effort to jumpstart the economy in Ireland.

According to a report in Herald Scotland (via Gamasutra), the Irish government is targeting Realtime Worlds, creator of the upcoming MMO APB and based in Dundee, Scotland, with the possibility of a five-year tax "holiday." Other Scottish developers that could be affected by the incentive would be Rockstar North (developer of Grand Theft Auto), Ruffian (maker of Crackdown 2), Denki, Dynamo Games, Firebrand Games, and Outerlight.

Colin Macdonald, studio chief at Realtime Worlds, told the Herald:

“If the package on offer in Ireland was attractive we’d have to give it serious consideration. Dundee is a great place to be based, one of the main hubs for ­computer games in Britain, but at the end of the day we’ve got to look after our bottom line.”

Macdonald also said that Canada had made serious overtures to the company and Realtime had actually lost some of its key people to the Great White North.

Scotland is apparently monitoring the situation. Tiga, the UK trade body for game developers, urged the Scottish Parliament's support for a 20 percent tax break for game developers earlier this year, according to Gamasutra.

In order to drive the development and implementation of “superfast broadband” throughout the country, England is set to introduce a tax on every phone line in the country.

According to the Daily Mail, Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, is attempting to initiate the levy ahead of the next elections. Digital Britain is the British government’s “strategic vision for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy.”

The tax calls for a 50p per-month, or £6-per-year (approximately $9.82 a year U.S.), additional charge on all phone lines. It’s estimated that the tariff could raise between £150 million and £175 million  (approximately $245 million to $286 million U.S.) a year.

The British government defines “superfast broadband” as the transfer of over 40 megabits per second.

TIGA, a UK trade association that represents game developers and associated businesses, has called for a national Games Tax Relief to spur growth and aid current interactive developers.

Labeling the current system of assistance as “incoherent and insufficient,” TIGA seeks a single, region-wide policy that would eliminate the current “post code lottery.” TIGA’s comments came following a report on actual funding from nine English Regional Development Agencies (RDA) disclosed a large gap in assistance provided based on region.

TIGA’s CEO, Richard Wilson explained:

... while many other countries provide generous tax relief for games production there is no similar tax benefit for game developers in England. More funding should be made accessible through national programmes that developers, irrespective of their geographical location, can benefit from.

TIGA sees Games Tax Relief assisting 60-80 titles per year and creating more than 1,400 jobs over five years.

Shadow Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey (left), a consistent supporter of the UK's video game industry, said this week that the British Government was too focused on the video game violence issue and not paying enough attention to helping the industry grow.

Develop reports that Vaizey made his comments while registering for the new London Games Conference, which will be held in October. The Conservative Member of Parliament said:

I’m delighted to be speaking to the London Games Conference. The games sector is one of the most successful creative industries in the UK, but it has been forgotten by Government.

While Canada and France aggressively compete to attract talent, all our politicians can talk about is video games violence.

Yet games should be a dream for a politician – it recruits people qualified in difficult subjects, like maths and computer science; it’s regional; and it’s successful and world-beating. Government backing should be a no-brainer.

Government tax breaks would create 1,400 new jobs for the UK video game industry within five years, says game developers group TIGA.

The organization, which has been fighting hard for government incentives in recent times, made its claim in a report sent to the UK's Department of Culture, Media and Sport late last week.

The document, titled Investing in the Future, lamented the loss of skilled British developers to nations in which government incentives for video game studios already exist:

Games would need to pass a cultural test, scoring against criteria of European heritage and game locations, languages, innovation, narrative, and location of development and key development staff. 44% of UK made games profiled in an exercise for the report passed...

 

With 60-80 titles benefitting per year, the tax measure would assist UK game developers without distorting the larger European game development market...

 

The Games Tax Relief is expected over 5 years to create 1,400 new jobs in the studio sector, increasing investment by games studios by 146m, direct and indirect annual tax revenues by 133m and GDP contribution by 323m. By year 5, for every 100 of investment by government in the Games Tax Relief, the industry will invest 176.

In a forward to the TIGA report, Lord Puttnam (left), Vice-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Computer and Video Games Industry, gave his strong support to the notion of a tax break:

For far too long the UK video games industry has been effectively taken for granted. To ensure the continuing success of this pre-eminently creative sector, I can only urge the Government to support TIGAs case for the introduction of a form of Games Tax Relief, as set out in this report.

The wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in the video game news thanks to her involvement with an obscure firm by the name of Magnitude Gaming. Although we were unable to locate a website, Magnitude is described by the Daily Mail as "one of a new breed of companies which manage semi-professional teams in the growing ‘e-sport’ world."

According to the Daily Mail, Blair, an attorney by profession, and her 23-year old son Nicky have accepted positions on the board of the fledgling company.

So why is this an issue? The Daily Mail sees hypocrisy in Blair's involvement with a firm connected - at least peripherally - to violent video games, given that she previously signed on to a report linking violent games to a wave of stabbings in the UK:

The company has run a team playing the Counter-Strike combat game... There have been claims that perpetrators of massacres in the US and Germany have been fans of the game.

Only last year, Mrs Blair... chaired a major inquiry into the growth of knife and gun crime on Britain’s streets which acknowledged the ‘dire consequences on some young people’ of the video games and films they watched.

The resulting report stated: ‘The broader cultural context in which young people live – the music they listen to, the films they watch, the video games and sports they play – are important in articulating values, defining what is 'cool' and fashionable, and legitimising social norms.’

Magnitude founder Gabriel Moraes, who is Nicky Blair's housemate, issued a statement on the flap:

Magnitude has never been involved with games containing any kind of street violence. We had one game involving soldiers in military combat but it had a rating of 18-plus and was a team game. We stopped involvement with that game some months ago.

Despite the stunning revelation of a bureaucrat screwup that invalidates 25 years' worth of game and movie content rating enforcement in the UK, all parties in the game supply chain have agreed to proceed as if the law was still in effect.

The British government is expected to fix the loophole, which dates back to the Maggie Thatcher era, later this year.

As reported by gamesindustry.biz, members of the UK's Video Standards Council have agreed to continue enforcing ratings. VSC exec Laurie Hall explains:

All sectors of our membership, whether they are video distributors, videogame publishers or entertainment retailers have confirmed that they will continue to conduct their businesses as usual.

Whatever the position of the law is at present our members will continue to operate as if it was mandatory. So far as videogames are concerned they have been acting upon this basis under the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system for quite some time.

In the UK, 25 years worth of government enforcement of content ratings for video games and films has been found to lack the required legal basis.

As reported by politics.co.uk, the Maggie Thatcher regime failed to notify the European Commission regarding the 1984 Video Recordings Act, thus invalidating the law.

In the UK, unlike the United States, content ratings have the force of law and those who sell adult-rated games or movies to minors can be charged with an offense. The oversight was discovered recently by the British government's Department for Culture Media and Sport.

A representative of the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association expressed amazement at the news:

This is extraordinary. For 25 years retailers have been faithfully administering the system and now this happens.

Meanhwile, Liberal Democrat Don Foster seized the opportunity to criticize Conservative Party leader David Cameron:

This must be a massive embarrassment to the Tories, especially as David Cameron was the special advisor to the Home Secretary in 1993 when the law was amended.

However, Conservative Jeremy Hunt pointed the finger of blame back at the Labor Government:

Much of the problem would have been avoided if they had sorted out the classification of video games earlier, as we and many others in the industry have been urging them to do.

Game publishers lobbying group ELSPA has counseled its members to proceed normally and offered to help the government fix the mistake. As reported by gamesindustry.biz, ELSPA boss Michael Rawlinson said:

The discovery that the Video Recordings Act is not enforceable is obviously very surprising. In the interest of child safety it is essential that this loophole is closed as soon as possible.

In this respect the videogames industry will do all it can to support and assist the government to that effect. ELSPA will therefore advise our members to continue to forward games to be rated as per the current agreement while the legal issues are being resolved.

Theoretically, at least, unscrupulous sellers have a 90-day window to peddle adult content to children. It will take the government at least that long to push through a revision to the VRA.

British Private Richard Hunt made the ultimate sacrifice last week when his company was struck by an explosive device while on patrol in Afghanistan.

During a well-attended ceremony back home in Monmouthshire on what would have been the fallen soldier's 22nd birthday, Private Hunt's father, Phillip, commemorated the time they spent together playing Call of Duty: World at War.

Along with flowers and other items, a copy of the game was laid at the site of the memorial service. A handwritten not attached to the game read:

Happy Birthday 'Hunty'. Play you again one day. Dad.

Via: BBC

Video games have gained recognition as a form of culture from the British government, reports gamesindustry.biz.

The site has an interview posted with Iain Symonds and James Newman of the UK's National Videogames Archive, which is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Symonds discussed the significance of the project:

It's a DCMS-funded project, and a partnership between Nottingham Trent University and the National Media Museum, and it's the first of its kind in terms of central government investment. In terms of the problems the industry has faced in government lobbying this is a pretty significant step forward for the public sector and a sense of cultural art.

Newman adds:

The biggest thing really was being ambitious about the scope of the things we were going to collect, because the temptation is just to collect games and consoles, and fetish-ise the object. It's not only the fan side, but also the production side of things as well - those stories that don't get told.

Some of the interesting things we're doing... is an expression of some of the archive work - some of the director's commentaries, stuff that you just don't hear, that you're used to hearing in film, and treating it as art, as craft. So Martin Hollis talking about GoldenEye, talking about it in a way that you've never seen before - even for fans of the game that know it inside out, it's a new perspective.
 

For those interested in the cultrual impact of video games, the full interview is defintely worth a read.

Eidos president Ian Livingstone (left) is the latest game industry exec to complain about used game sales.

The BBC spoke to Livingstone about the issue. Here are the Eidos exec's comments:

The pre-owned market is a serious problem, because there is no benefit to developers or publishers...

A shop makes a bigger margin on a pre-owned title, and can sell them six or seven times, so there is no incentive for them to reorder and the content creator gets no slice of the action.

GP: "No slice of the action," of course, is the operative phrase in Livingstone's mini-rant.

Frankly, I have no sympathy for the industry's used game whiners and even less when I remember that digital distribution is inching ever closer. When that happens, the publishers will be in the driver's seat.

Enjoy your used game savings while you can.

Via: gi.biz