UK Tax Breaks For "Culturally British" Games 267
An anonymous reader writes with news of a proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are "culturally British." Quoting the report (PDF): "In film a system of cultural tax credits has long helped to sustain a wide range of films that speak to a British narrative, rather than the cultural perspectives of Hollywood or multinational collaborations. Other countries such as Canada, for similar reasons, extend the model of cultural tax relief beyond the film industry to the interactive and online worlds. CGI, electronic games and simulation also have a significant role in Britain's digital content ecology and in our international competitiveness. Each of these has the same capability as the more traditional sectors, such as film, to engage us and reflect our cultural particularism. They may in future have a cultural relevance to rival that of film." Conservative Shadow Arts and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the government has ignored the games industry, and he seeks to set up a government council to promote it. The report also outlined a number of changes to how games are rated.
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:3, Informative)
Nah, too obscure. Not so many people know history these days and they'd mistake it for the ongoing policy of the US. It has to be something genuinely British.
Like, say, Cooking Mama: British Edition. The worse it tastes the higher your score.
Re:Coming soon for the Wii... (Score:3, Informative)
Soccer riots ???
I think you'll find you meant to say "Football"
Re:British (Score:5, Informative)
Re:British (Score:3, Informative)
EA Sports Cricket is very real. [computeran...ogames.com]
And you know, football hooligans might even get me to play a Sims game.
Digital Britain to push "culturally British" games (Score:3, Informative)
As well as attempting to give the major record companies whatever they want until the end of time [today.com], Lord Carter's Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for "culturally British" computer game development.
Planned games include Couch Warrior ("the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player's avatar on the screen"), CCTV Panopticon ("take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public"), Bottled Tan Snorter ("get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence or words of two syllables") and Cynical Apathist ("write outraged blog comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running"). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone.
The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey, has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. "We'll keep their passports from them until they reach 'Achievement Unlocked.'"
Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. "Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I've just given everything they've ever asked for. And a pony."
Re:Corruption! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can't ... resist ... (Score:3, Informative)
Mornington Crescent! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Xenophobia (Score:3, Informative)
That Labour has ceased to represent any sort of left alternative is inseparable from the growing appeal of the BNP's right alternative.
You should clarify what you mean by "left" and "right".
The BNP have left-wing economic policies. They are similar to those of the Green Party, except the BNP add "if you're white" to everything. (So, free university (if you're white), and better public transport, and an emphasis on local manufacturing/consumption, social welfare, NHS, etc).
The BNP has right-wing social policies (freedoms, etc), pretty much the opposite of the Green Party.
You might find this interesting: http://politicalcompass.org/ [politicalcompass.org]
Re:Coming soon for the Wii... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:1, Informative)
what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Nah, that's not culturally British, the Americans do it too.
Re:British Drivers (Score:4, Informative)
Funny thing is, Grand Theft Auto is a British game. Made in Scotland, from girders. It's just set in America - or rather, in the distorted image of America we get from gangster movies and crime TV shows.
But apparently, instead of encouraging British developers to produce games that sell bazillions worldwide, they'd prefer to encourage... well, I'm not sure. The most culturally British game I've played lately was Professor Layton on the DS, an entirely Japanese production. Other than that, culturally British... well, there was Bully, Rockstar again, set in America but in a school which was a bizarre hybrid of an expensive boarding school and the worst ever borstal, and in which the hero fights with weapons taken straight from the pages of the Beano. And there was Civ IV: Beyond the Sword, which had a much improved model of imperialism where you just forced people into vassalage rather than outright annexation.
Was Planescape: Torment culturally British? I mean, nearly everyone in it spoke eighteenth-century Cockney thieves' slang... How about World of Warcraft? - I mean, not that they're blatantly ripping off any well-known British roleplaying and wargaming setting or anything.