Legal Niches

U.K. Game Biz Wants Government to Stop Brain Drain

By gamepolitics

Video game industry types in the U.K. are lamenting the loss of talented developers to competing nations, reports the Guardian.

Complaints about a lack of government subsidies to U.K. game firms has been increasingly heard in recent years. The newspaper notes that video games, which add more than a billion pounds to the nation's GDP, receive no support while film production, which contributes less, is susidized.

Canada and France, both of which support their game industries, are taking business - and talent - away from U.K. firms. Some 30,000 British expatriot game biz workers live in British Columbia alone. EA developer Matthew Boulton is among them:

Games are a lot more high profile here; it's recognised as an important industry. Maybe that's true in the UK as well, but you never get that sense. You never hear politicians mention it – but here, it's one of the things that people know is strong and that you need to support.

Conservative MP Edward Vaizey, a strong supporter of the U.K. game industry, told the Guardian:

The only time [the game biz] gets mentioned in parliament is when Keith Vaz [chairman of the home affairs committee] is blaming it for causing some recent outrage. We were the second largest in the world, but we are slipping.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on May 18, 2009 (boomark / email).