Guess I should be saying bubbye to some of my friends right now.

The way things are going, studios will soon be able to move anywhere. Anywhere apart from Britain, of course

Pretty soon the only country where any development will be taking place is Canada. The rich pool of talent here will find it increasingly difficult to find jobs and either ship over there or get out of the industry completely.

I can guarantee if a tax break was offered here in the UK, within five years there would be twenty to thirty new large studios opened and thousands of new jobs created; not to mention the vast injection of revenue into the treasury. Are politicians too stupid to examine the facts, or do they buy into the scaremongering mass media in this country?
I hope that the new government here will make this a big priority or pretty soon there'll be no industry to save.

"I can guarantee if a tax break was offered here in the UK, within five years there would be twenty to thirty new large studios opened and thousands of new jobs created; not to mention the vast injection of revenue into the treasury."

Spot on sir. Spot on.

"Are politicians too stupid to examine the facts, or do they buy into the scaremongering mass media in this country?"

I think there may be some ground to this; when you think how the current government basically got into power and kept it by playing the media, maybe it's not too far fetched to believe they are so consumed by it that they are now driven as such.

Again, probably just attack of the grumpy age gremlinis.

There may be hope for the UK yet. The question is where will that come from.

I know a few commenters here call for a change in UK government… I’m kind of worried that could be a step backwards.

I recently heard Shadow culture secretary Ed Vaizey promise to “aid the game industry” (I know – very broad pledge) within a three year timeline.

Firstly, he’s previously dodged any commitment to tax breaks. He said we need to “look beyond” that. There’s a report on here somewhere about that.

Secondly, I’m not sure whether he was electioneering or not when giving that three year timeline.

I know the Tories currently have a policy of making hard-looking announcements; their angle is that the UK’s obviously proper fucked financially, so it’d be risky to pretend otherwise.

But, y’know, Tory policies change by the day. And I’m worried that the three-year timeline would quickly become a ten year one under Cameron’s leadership.

So yeah, time for a change, but not necessarily via a general election.

Firstly, the UK has already lost a significant number of talented developers, and even with tax breaks it won't be easy to tempt them back - life abroad, for many of them, is simply too good.

Secondly, there's the argument that tax breaks simply create a Dutch auction, and there's an element of truth there. We've already seen it in north America, with states and provinces competing with each other to offer the most attractive tax credits system. If it was cheaper to do business in Canada BEFORE tax breaks (and it was) then even if we GET tax breaks, it'll still be cheaper - and there's now a much bigger pool of talent over there.

Thirdly, even if we got the tax breaks, what would we do with them? Where would the extra staff come from? They won't be ex-pats coming back home. And generally, people from the continent aren't that keen on working in the UK, because of the stories they've heard about how expensive/crap it is here. And people from outside the EU? Well, the work permit system - especially in a recession - is stacked against getting people in.

Rob, Ed Vaizey. I'd agree with what you said. Ed Vaizey doesn't give a **** about the games industry, really (neither do 99% of politicians, to be fair to him). For him, it's just a shadow cabinet brief before he moves on to bigger and better things. If you go to see your boss, and you ask for a pay rise, and he starts talking about the need to "look beyond" an actual payrise... well, exactly. Oh, and "I’m not sure whether he was electioneering or not when giving that three year timeline" - politicians are ALWAYS electioneering - even when they're not;)

Also, we've got the problems with the EU. Tax breaks constitute state aid and distort the market, and so have to be approved by the Commission. It took the French almost 2 years to get their system approved, and whilst I suspect the UK could have it done more quickly if they adopt the French system 9or maybe adopt the film industry rules here), it's still not going to be a case of a quick phone call.

Lastly, what will happen if we DO bring in tax breaks and they're successful? The same thing as in Canada. The indigenous developers will all be swallowed up by big multinationals, and UK tax money will be used to subsidise the creation of IP that will be sent abroad, along with its profits. This isn't an argument against tax breaks per se, but I do personally think they should be available only to local developers who are allowed to retain ownership of their own IP. Now THAT would work. Probably not go down too well with the EU, but given how idiotic the EU is that probably means it's a good thing.

I appreciate this all sounds very doom and gloom - I'm not trying to sound down about the possibility of tax breaks here, just calling it as I see it.

Anyway, lunchtime. Here endeth:)

So Canada is rapidly becoming the videogames equivalent to Hollywood. Obviously a bit bigger and restricted to a few cities rather than one, but the principal is still there.

If you're an actor/tress, you can make your way with local plays, smaller films studios and so forth, but to truly make it as a movie star, you need to head to Tinseltown.

Likewise, if you're a developer and you want to hit the big time, work on the big guns, etc, you've got to head over to Canada.

But is this a good thing? Can games development become too centralised in one territory?

I think tax breaks need to be introduced, although I accept it's not as simple as all that.

Microsoft's presence in the UK means we still retain some development talent – and to a lesser extent that is true of Sony's studios.

If we introduce tax breaks, then I believe we can expect more publishers to seek or create UK developers. And these publishers will seek the best talent, be that within our country or from abroad – including those that left to Canada.

However, tax breaks could also mark the death nail for our indie studios.

And let us not forget the skills problem in the UK. It's all well and good encouraging more UK studios – but without the talent what's the point?

Agree many of the sentiments above. The frustrating issue is that regardless of what political party might be in power our support structures for companies are far from efficient - the support for our industry is that same as with all other SMEs except for the actual shows we might get help to go to. The current thinking does the games industry a disservice by lumping it together for policy purposes and action with 12 or more other 'creative industries' - if you have to find common ground with architecture, fashion music and TV it all becomes diluted into to some cheapskate OEM joblot package. Then you have 3 nations and 9 English RDAs all competing with each other and then there are various support agencies competing with that. If you had all the money that goes into that they could probably afford the tax breaks. For the moment the devaluation of the £ against the Yen and $ have done more than the tax break might have, and without a bureaucracy to go through and administer the rules. But its the complete system for enterprise that needs overhauling, in Canada and Korea it is not just the tax break on its own giving companies from there an increasing advantage - its a coherent package of measures. On the University front supply lead courses lead to many of them being meaningless, selling both the industry short and the punters who think they are going to get jobs at the end of their courses. Also one has to ask why our government interprets WTO and EU competition rules in a fundamentalist way like no other countries in the world do including the US of A. Basically some new thinking is needed if this country wants to continue producing enterprises to sell to the Americans and Japanese (I would rather we try to build more value added in the UK but the government does not think this matters), and the developers need to wise up to the new opportunities out there for going direct to consumers and not relying on the same old publishers to pay the bills.

Ed got in touch with me, asked what proof I had that he didn't care about the games industry (see my above post). Told him I'd repost to make clear that when I said he didn't care about the industry I didn't have any *actual proof* that *he* doesn't care about the games industry, and that I was really making a reference to politicians in general.

There we go Ed, hope that makes you happy:)

I think talent will not be a problem, especially with initiatives such as Skillset. However, it is natural for a place that is thriving within a certain industry to quickly develop proper education to meet the demands for that industry. If there were many positions created every year, I believe more people would seek out games related education and games as prospective career. As a game programming student I can only say there are good courses in this country, but not that many, and they would grow much better if there was a thriving industry.

Well if you don't want to leave the UK entirely, set-up in Isle of Man where corporations pay 0% corporation tax, 0% capital gains, and the higher rate of income tax is going to be 20% (going up from 18%). IoM is signed up to all the IP conventions, is with the scope of VAT, and the local DTI are interested in helping people get started here offering upto 40% capex grants and 50% on office rental and re-location costs. Just sayin...

I should have added, there's actually going to be a trade delegation for software companies (not just gaming) on 17th/18th of March where you could come and learn about what's on offer on the Isle of Man.

http://tinyurl.com/softwaretmiom