Tiga looks to the future

It's been five years since Fred Hasson founded developers' trade body Tiga. Since then, the industry has seen many changes - but arguably, the greatest shift is yet to occur, as the arrival of the Nintendo Wii and PS3 herald the beginning of the next-gen console battle.

There's also the issue of how the ESA's plans to downsize E3 will affect the industry, and what impact it'll have on other trade shows around the globe. GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Hasson to find out what the ramifications will be for the development community, and what the future holds in store for rival events such as GDC and Develop.

Fred Hasson: I'm surprised, because it was such a substantial show. But then I think, what did I think when I was there? And I remember thinking, is this really the most efficient way to do business? At a show where you've got people wandering round with inflatable Webzen swords in their bags, taking poor quality shots of games on screens? There was an amateurishness about it, versus the huge amounts of money spent on booths.

The fact is it's a fast changing industry, it's rapidly evolving, and one has to be respectful of the ESA's decision. They've taken appropriate action.

Do you think events like GDC will become more significant now?

GDC is the biggest event in the calendar for developers, and a lot of business goes on. There are great conference tracks, lots of wonderful sessions, and it's where you can see the big gurus from Nintendo and Sony and so on perform at their best.

I've always said it's an event for developers on developers' terms, and a lot of publishers come there to meet developers and see what's going on. In a way, for the development community, that's more appropriate for us.

So our strategy - even before we knew there was anything going on with E3 - was to say to the DTI, we believe more developers would benefit from going out to events such as GDC in terms of their business interests and their commercial prospects.

In a way, E3 was about what's been done - maybe GDC is more about what needs to be done, and what can be done.

So GDC's prospects are good in the wake of the news about E3?

On a hunch, I'd say it's probably quite good news for GDC. I think the States is a big market, and it's where British developers absolutely need to aim most of their products.

More and more of the product has to be aimed at the global market. The US is the biggest of those markets by far, especially as it's growing, just, whereas Japan is going down and Europe maybe reaching a plateau. So you have to be there.

GDC is already moving to San Francisco because what were very large facilities at San Jose were just too small. So this should give it a bit of a boost, because people are going to have E3 budget which is not going to be spent this year. They can either save it, or think of other ways of spending it, and I would have said that going over to the States once a year to a big event, where there's lots of business potential, is probably the right thing to do. So that's where i would advise people to spend their money.

The ESA has suggested that E3 will now take place in July, rather than May as is traditional. What impact might this have?

I think on that count, there's a big issue around what the UK does. Basically a lot of people, including us, have been involved in big discussions about what's the best event for the UK. ECTS, GDCE, as they used to be run, were probably getting past their sell by date, and so in a way it wasn't surprising when the industry tried to do some other things.

We went to Excel, that was on the back of a consumer show; the marketplace looked as if it was the beginnings of the right thing with EGN, but it only lasted a year, and then some other people positioned themselves for GME.

And now we've got a publisher-led initiative to have a London Games Festival, which is actually finding a lot of favour with government departments and the London Development Agency. If you think about it, a lot of other creative industries do exactly that - they have a week of activities around their industry, whether it's design, fashion or film, in London.

The London Development Agency, which is supported by the Mayor's office, thinks that this is an important way forward - and it's hard to argue with that. It's almost like a coming of age.

Is the timing right, at the beginning of October? Only time will tell. Should the Develop conference be there as well? Who knows.

What about the issue of the Develop conference also taking place in July?

Brighton is a perfect location for a development conference, and I think it made a reasonable start this year; most people were very happy. It depends whether we want the Develop conference to be an international event. It's not clear to me whether people will want to go to E3 in July, because I'm not sure if people will see there's much benefit in doing that.

I've heard E3 is targeted at the North American market. Develop definitely had the feel of a UK event, so maybe that's what it is - it's regional events, horses for courses. Maybe there isn't a conflict at all.

It'll depend on the publishers, and whether they want the developers to go out to E3 with them at that point in time. I'm not sure that they will, to be honest, although it's still not 100 per cent clear.

What I've heard about E3 is that it's aimed at the North American market more than anything else. Having said that, we need to aim at the North American market. It's a tough one, but we've got discussions amongst the trade associations and the government, so we'll see. That will become clearer over the next few months.