Tiga Takeout: August 2007
Despite below par weather, the Brighton Develop event came out shining. Good keynotes and conference, user friendly facilities, the UKTI choo-choo and a refreshingly funny approach to presenting the Develop awards all made this one to remember and one to build into a major European event in the future.
Congratulations to all who won awards in particular to Tiga members Zoe Mode (Crush - new handheld IP), FreeStyle (B-Boy - Audio), Babel Media (Services & Outsourcing), Rockstar Leeds (Best Handheld Studio), Blitz (Business Development) and not least Sony Computer Entertainment (Grand Prix).
Meanwhile now that the new government ministers have had time to settle in, we at Tiga have to once more appraise them of the worth and significance of our industry. The good news is that we have had so much musical chairs in the DTI *(RIP see below) and DCMS that they have now recycled some of the faces from before, namely James Purnell MP and Margaret Hodge MP, which should mean we can make some progress with getting results from policies. The outgoing Minister Shaun Woodward certainly left his mark - and will not be easy to follow if any of the new incumbants want to prove they care about making a difference at all - and although he tried to foist a âGames Academyâ (aka âhoodie academyâ) on a recalcitrant industry during the Creative industries summit, before he left he let the cat out of the bag on a piece of research carried out and paid for by UKTI which reported that the UK has fallen to no 4 in the global development stakes, losing its place to Canada. Reports are now reaching us with alarming regularity on how investment is going there instead of here, how key staff are being tempted by tax holidays and how itâs increasingly difficult to compete against a saving of 30-50 % on console games. Please keep us informed of any similar experiences. * now known as BERR and DUIS - a brace of Tiga pens for the first person to write in and decipher these lovely acronyms
Meanwhile we are doing our bit with our small budget to help things on in the right direction. Check out the Work permits and Employment seminar with Osborne Clarke on Wednesday 19th September - please feed us any stories and issues you have with permits for non-EU nationals. Also of much pecuniary worth to your company, will be the seminar we hold with the Treasury and Inland Revenue on Monday 17th September at SJ Berwins to discuss the claiming of R&D Tax Credits. Among the audience will be inspectors who check the claims. Again we need evidence and anecdotes of your experiences claiming these. The Treasury have told us the sector could claim more! Thatâs an offer you should not resist. Both these issues will be covered in the 3rd edition of the best practice handbook and roadshow in Spring next year. We are also planning be a new section dealing with shareholders agreements and company share schemes and a section on outsourcing contracts. As sponsors of Dare to be Digital, the Tiga best practice handbook will be awarded to the winners of the competition.
In October the London Games Festival runs from 22nd to 26th - anyone who has a credible games related event can come under the banner. Tiga will be running an event on Tuesday 23rd October called âWorking with Gamesâ where presentations and panels will discuss the possibilities of collaboration in advertising, film and TV. Partners in this will be Pact and Bafta; one of the event objectives is to deliver potential business partnerships in these other media