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October 27th, 2009 @ BAFTA, London
The games industry gathered in October to discuss the future of content distribution.
UK studios converge to battle over who's the cleverest - have you booked your place yet?
October 27th, 2009 @ BAFTA, London
The games industry gathered in October to discuss the future of content distribution.
UK studios converge to battle over who's the cleverest - have you booked your place yet?
Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson reveals his displeasure as gifted developers flock to tax-friendly Canada
The UK’s loss of talented developers in the sports genre has been ‘utterly huge’ according to Miles Jacobson, the studio head of London-based Football Manager developer Sports Interactive.
In an exclusive interview with Develop, Jacobson explained that Canada’s exemplary tax break rates – which peak at 40% of dev costs – was the reason why a number of British-born developers now work in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.
“Professionally, my interests are focused on sports games,” said Jacobson, “and the talent that we’ve lost from the UK in that field has been huge. Utterly huge. “We’re very specialist in what we do, and a lot of specialist football game designers have moved to EA Canada.”
EA’s Vancouver studio – today the publisher’s biggest development house – has in recent years won widespread acclaim for restoring the FIFA football series as the kingpin of a fiercely-contested genre.
The man at the centre of FIFA’s return to form is British-born David Rutter, who today resides in Vancouver as producer for the upcoming FIFA10.
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Though displeased, Jacobson said it was understandable why the likes of Rutter have moved to Canada.
“FIFA’s a big deal,” he said, “and EA want UK staff, but the UK’s not attractive enough a place to set up a studio in.”
The UK department for culture is still deliberating whether it should introduce UK tax breaks to help the sector become more globally competitive.
“Achieving that milestone is massively important,” said Jacobson. “If we had tax breaks, we would utilize that spare revenue to try and get back some of those hugely talented people who’ve moved out of the UK to work on Football games in Canada.”
Jacobson stated his belief that a game tax relief bill will eventually materialise in Westminster, but perhaps not right now, and perhaps not strictly because of the game industry’s recent campaign on this issue.
“Regardless of what’s going on right now, I think that within the next two decades the games industry will actually be recognized in a culturally similar way as film and music,” he said.
“What I hope will happen in that time is that the games industry will learn how to PR itself better than they are right now, where the industry can be treated respectfully on a mass-market scale.
“The film industry is treated in different ways and it’s purely from a PR perspective. If we want to be taken seriously, we’ve got to start PR-ing ourselves properly.
Publishers and Developers getting their hands on more cash via UK tax breaks won't help talent to stay in the UK. It will help developers to get richer, sure. As an employee who has left the UK for Canada, I considered things such as salary, cost of living, quality of life, work-life balance, access to health care and affordable housing before leaving, and i'll tell you now, I didn't think twice. The UK simply cannot compete with North America in these areas. How does a tax break for game developer's help anyone but the publishers and top tier execs?
Well said H Stanton I totally agree with you its about time someone mentioned this side to it. Why do I want to make publishers and developers richer will I see any of it....I very much doubt it.....what about the artists and animators programmers....the real people behind the games??? The salaries in the UK suck! I can't wait to get back out of the UK to work abroad again. I left the UK because of cost of living, Salary, quality of life unfotunetly out of my control I had to come back after 3 years......but determined to jump ship ASAP. We might make the best games in the world but do the real people behind it get any of the credit or the sweet salaries to keep the talent here......eh nope!....so maybe thats why we bloody leave!!!
There are probably a swathe of things that need changing, the tax benefits will certainly help the funding of titles in the UK. It may also shake things up a bit giving opportunities to those who are less established. Quality of life, salary and all the rest have to be addresses seperately to get a good result.
One very salient point which seems to have been glossed over in this article is that British Columbia, the province where EA Canada (FIFA) is based, currently has no tax incentives for game developers. Sure, Quebec has high tax incentives for developers, but FIFA isn't being made in Quebec. It is a generalisation to say 'Canada has tax incentives' without making the distinction of the different provinces.
If you want to keep talented developers in the UK, increase the salaries by 50% to bring them in line with other industries. Make the average wage of a skilled, senior programmer £60-70k, not £40k, and remove the ceiling that many people reach after ~5 years in the business where they top out unless they go into management.
It's time UK games companies stopped thinking of their employees as people who are doing it "for fun" like it's still 1983 and we've got teams of two people making games in their back bedrooms.
Games today are made by teams of 100 skilled professionals doing a job. Games development is a specialist job requiring a unique set of skills, and the good people can easily jump ship to a different industry, or a different country like Canada, that pays a lot more (compared to the cost of living). If you want to keep those people you have to pay them properly.
Agreed MS.
quoting the article...“If we had tax breaks, we would utilize that spare revenue to try and get back some of those hugely talented people who’ve moved out of the UK to work on Football games in Canada.”
"Spare revenue"
When it comes to money, nothing is spare. And let's face it, the 'key talent' referenced here are producers like David Rutter who command very high salaries. In this scenario I suspect once a producer like this has mopped up this supposed spare revenue with their salary raise and relocation incentives there wouldn't be many crumbs left for the 100+ other members of the dev team. Unless these tax incentives are some kind of multi-million deal.
Bottom line is, frankly, no amount of money would tempt me back to the UK. There are simply too many other factors that make it a poor place to live and work IMO.
