I tried to make this long post as readable as possible... so apologies.

The Financial Review has today run a story on how the most recent budget handed down has done little to develop the Australian Games Development industry.

A quote from Australia's second largest developer... a melbourne based developer whose name escapes me... said that for every $1,000 dollars invested in film, $3 was put into games.

The source indicated that it is a perception problem about the industry, with the old boys in politics seeing games as something for children. Yup... it's that old nugget - one that has been well discussed on many a forum.

Gaming has been growing steadily over years now, and i think it's rather short-sighted of our Government to not invest in the developing industry. In fact, I'm of the impression that they might've missed the boat, seeing as development costs are now blowing out, making it extremely difficult for small time developers to get started and making titles that put Australia on the Games Map.

But what to do?

Perhaps tax cuts for development companies? Would that encourage overseas developers to establish an Australian presence, and in turn, developing local talent?

An August 2006 submission to government by the GDAA highlights the barriers that Australian developers face, in that games are produced for a global market, whereas film can be local only. Games development faces global competition, and therefore has to grow up pretty quickly.

http://www.gdaa.com.au/docs/govtsubmission.pdf

The establishment of Games Development Courses in Australia has been a step forward, but a possible gunshot to the leading foot is that there are little opportunities in the local industry. What incentive is there for student to complete their studies, only to find they have to relocate to the UK for the dream job?

This is a simple piece by me, one that has been based upon reading an article, and doing a quick google search, so please excuse me if this reads a bit like a News Corp, right-wing opinion piece.

That sucks compared to France, where I believe games are considered art as well as film and theatre so its not under tax or something.

You can almost here the oily rasping of Ubisoft rubbing their hands together at that (just kidding boys, love your work).

I'm not sure if it's totally tax exempt, but I believe they receive some extremely generous leniency, as well as grants for smaller studios doing intellectually based or highly original titles.

I searched and found out that (though it still has to be approved be the European Union) French developers get "special tax breaks" only if the game they're making is "culturally relevant" which means they have to be written in Francais, have a narration of some kind, and be an adventure or sim. :P

Games need to be accepted as being the new Hollywood. And like you said, the old people at the top need to wake up or feck off.

This is just getting annoying...I'm gonna take this up with my local member!

Original? Culturally relevant? maybe france should start promoting themselves as the only place that has bipedal pigs (and start trying to teach their swine to walk upright). Then we might see Beyond Good and Evil 2... :D

Anyway...

I'm usually against claiming that problems are a result of government short sightedness, mainly because that's what everyone does whenever they're struggling... blame the government. But in this case, we've seen extraordinary growth in games development in the US and the UK - many considering them to be surpassing their Japanese peers - and yet AU government stands idle, or tries to support Australia's flagging film industry (whilst this isn't something that was part of the 07 federal budget, the Qld government supplied $500,000 {sourced from wiki} for Luhrmann's upcoming and contrivedly named film, "Australia". I feel this is an example of the kind of support film gets). Whilst half a mil isn't exactly big bucks (especially in games development), I hope games development would receive something similar, sometime.

I realise that film is well established and possibly stands a better chance of good returns on investment, but I wouldn't be worried if the government invested more taxpayers money into videogames - even if the titles flop at retail. At least they're giving local talent a chance to work on a commercial title, providing them with valuable commercial experience.

Australia's modding community is extremely passionate, from what I've read, and I'm sure would love an opportunity to work on commercial titles.

The Victorian goverment is doing a good job at supporting the industry, but they've only go so much to throw around.

Actually... yes. Sorry, i did mean to mention the Victorian Government which has been a pioneer in this regard... I couldn't find a source to back me up, though.

My bad.

I also know for a fact(I have the documents :P) that the ACT government supports the industry as well, but again, there ain't much money to go around.
But considering how small the ACT is, it's good to see it getting support(even if it's minimal) for local devs and education facilities.

Really it's the Federal Goverment that's being stingey and narrow-minded on the issue...fucking Liberals. :P

The only time I like politics is whe the Asian bigwigs duke it out during a meeting or somehing. Very amusing.

I like the APEC meetings cause they always have to wear silly clothes. :P