UK games industry needs Government support

The UK computer games industry has blamed its slide down the world rankings on a lack of Government financial support and fewer properly trained graduates.

According to Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos, the UK is estimated to have slipped from third to fifth position in the global league of videogame-producing nations.

Speakers at the Westminster eForum seminar on the state of the UK computer and video games industry said that the situation was forcing games developers to consider moving operations to countries where conditions are more favourable.

They pointed out that while the British film industry receives both tax breaks and lottery funding, the games industry gets no such support, yet generates 44 per cent more revenue.

The Canadian government provides a tax subsidy in order to create favourable conditions for games companies.

Chris Deering, non-executive chairman of Codemasters, the only independent games publisher remaining in the UK, said that a handout alone will not solve the problem.

“The UK also faces a brain drain,” he said.

This paradoxically is not helped by a rise in the number of applicants for computer game design courses.

Industry veteran David Braben, the founder of Cambridge-based games studio Frontier Developments, said many courses did not provide the neccessary computer skills.

What the country needed, he said, were more computer science graduates. But the number of people taking courses that do provide the fundamental skills needed to develop computer games has declined in the UK since 2004.

Mr Braben blamed current methods of teaching ICT in schools for concentrating too much on how to use software rather than developing the maths and computer science skills which he says are necessary for a career in game development.