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UK Tax Breaks For "Culturally British" Games
An anonymous reader writes with news of a proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are "culturally British." Quoting the report (PDF): "In film a system of cultural tax credits has long helped to sustain a wide range of films that speak to a British narrative, rather than the cultural perspectives of Hollywood or multinational collaborations. Other countries such as Canada, for similar reasons, extend the model of cultural tax relief beyond the film industry to the interactive and online worlds. CGI, electronic games and simulation also have a significant role in Britain's digital content ecology and in our international competitiveness. Each of these has the same capability as the more traditional sectors, such as film, to engage us and reflect our cultural particularism. They may in future have a cultural relevance to rival that of film." Conservative Shadow Arts and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the government has ignored the games industry, and he seeks to set up a government council to promote it. The report also outlined a number of changes to how games are rated.
To qualify, games must be written in Python.
Tea & Crumpets: The Game!
Coming soon: Dodging Dentists 2
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think it's interesting that the tax breaks are for games with a British cultural setting, rather than simply being for British game development companies. I'm sure that a predominantly British development team will by its very nature develop games with a bit of a British bent to them.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Pub Brawl
Use you Wii-remote as either a beer glass or chair and attack as many fellow pub drinkers, as possible...
Or
Soccer riots:
The worlds first multiplayer FPR (First person rioting) game....
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Nah, too obscure. Not so many people know history these days and they'd mistake it for the ongoing policy of the US. It has to be something genuinely British.
Like, say, Cooking Mama: British Edition. The worse it tastes the higher your score.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So making a map for a FPS where you trash the London subways instead of some other town's might qualify? Just curious...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I may well get modded to hell for this, but...
With xenophobic/nationalist ways of looking at society like this - that $YOUR_NATIONAL_IDENTITY is under attack, threatened of being diluted into oblivion - being mainstream, it's a lot easier to understand how the rhetoric of the fascist British National Party - and its analogues elsewhere in Europe - could have appealed to so many voters in recent elections.
Property is theft.
Expense fiddling - the game
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are culturally British.
The Sims - Football Hooligans
EA Sports Cricket 09
Age Of Former Empires
Tom Clancy's Surveillance Society
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Bertie & Wooster: The Game. Go on a policeman helmet stealing rampage, do whatever your servant tells you to do while avoiding getting married.
Battlefield: British Colonies. Take control of Africa and East Asia before France does! Beware of the native warriors, some throw very sharp slices of mango!
Okay that's all I've got, help me out guys!
You just got troll'd!
what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
I think there are more frequent articles concerning the UK, which means there are more opportunities, but I think the anti-British comments were worse a couple of years ago.
As well as attempting to give the major record companies whatever they want until the end of time, Lord Carter's Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for "culturally British" computer game development.
Planned games include Couch Warrior ("the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player's avatar on the screen"), CCTV Panopticon ("take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public"), Bottled Tan Snorter ("get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence or words of two syllables") and Cynical Apathist ("write outraged blog comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running"). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone.
The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey, has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. "We'll keep their passports from them until they reach 'Achievement Unlocked.'"
Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. "Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I've just given everything they've ever asked for. And a pony."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I don't know but that game sounds pretty freaking sweet.
Coming this year:
* Asbo of the Colossus
* Big Brain City Academy
* Turning Point: Fall of (civil) Liberties
* Nintendogs (poodle edition)
* Mario & Sonic in "Olympic overspend"
* House Of The Red (-handed)
(that's enough British games- ed)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Don't forget that the ethnic cleansing, the genocide, the slavery, the wars started solely to gain political favour at home, the systematic disregard for human life (not just abroad, either), and the levels of bigotry that make the KKK look liberal. We also have the dubious distinction of being the inventors of the concentration camp. The British Empire was not a nice place and the world is better without it. (Not that the other colonial powers were any better, of course.)
I don't think people like the BNP who keep going on about the erosion of British values actually know what those values are.
Wii binge drinking? Wii pint lifting?
Bagpipe Hero?
Or was the plan to play Wii Cricket (probably already exists?)?
Also cool with new motion sensors: Ministry of Funny Walks - the game.
Now the world can experience sitting around sipping tea, losing cricket and whining about the shitty weather.
.
Not distinctive enough. That could be American, or Spanish, or Roman or...
No, culturally British means "badly done cockney accents, in rubbish games that only see the light of day due to my tax money being used to subsidise them."
You heard it here first.
This sig all sigs devours
But would you use Trumpington's Rule Variations or the more accepted Tudor Court Rules?
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I'm sure it'll only lead to only completely accurate portrays of true English culture, just like how America's Army does similar for the US army.
So expect:
- Restaurant Simulator - using entirely British food and cooking techniques; build a world-beating restaurant that makes Italians cry.
- British Football 3D - play entirely respectful games of football winning with skill, but also good manners and complimenting the opponents to victory.
- Railways on-line - improve an already perfect railway to be even more "perfecter". The more you make the French jealous, the more points you get.
I can't wait!
throw new NoSignatureException();
what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
With vandalizing a bus shelter mini-game.
Dear Richard Garriot,
Since there is a tax break for games that are culturally British, now is the time for you to quit screwing around on space stations, brow beat the rights to Ultima back, and Get Lord British and the Avatar kicking ass and taking names once again in Sorsia. RESSURECT ORIGIN PLEASE! I need a good Wing Commander game KTHX!
We now return you to your regularlly scheduled M$ vs Linux /. flame war...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Nah.....thats too old. Games need to be edgy these days. You know...so all the youth actually buy it. I suggest a sandbox game where you play as a 15 year old. The game will involve binge drinking, turf wars with other local gangs (all made up of 11-19 year olds). Then you just gotta add chavs and its done. Almost forgot...the side quests will involve "happy slapping". you regain health by eating British food such as curry and kebabs.
Okay... maybe not.
Funny thing is, Grand Theft Auto is a British game. Made in Scotland, from girders. It's just set in America - or rather, in the distorted image of America we get from gangster movies and crime TV shows.
But apparently, instead of encouraging British developers to produce games that sell bazillions worldwide, they'd prefer to encourage... well, I'm not sure. The most culturally British game I've played lately was Professor Layton on the DS, an entirely Japanese production. Other than that, culturally British... well, there was Bully, Rockstar again, set in America but in a school which was a bizarre hybrid of an expensive boarding school and the worst ever borstal, and in which the hero fights with weapons taken straight from the pages of the Beano. And there was Civ IV: Beyond the Sword, which had a much improved model of imperialism where you just forced people into vassalage rather than outright annexation.
Was Planescape: Torment culturally British? I mean, nearly everyone in it spoke eighteenth-century Cockney thieves' slang... How about World of Warcraft? - I mean, not that they're blatantly ripping off any well-known British roleplaying and wargaming setting or anything.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm sorry, but I can't think of "Culturally British Games" without expecting Monty Python cast members to be involved somewhere.
How about Llamatron?
How about a game where you get to go around the streets of Britain shooting video cameras and avoiding the... police?
Make it a third-person shooter where that view originates from those very same cameras. (Or would that be a second-person shooter?) You get first-person view only when you've destroyed all the cameras that could see you. When you walk into another's view, you're suddenly third-person again. Except for the hidden cameras, of which you see their perspective only when you're looking straight at them (as your sight glances over them you get a blink of the other perspective as a hint).
Also, you don't get to start with a gun. Not even a throwing knife. You have to start with rocks, and chuck them when the cameras pan off you so as to avoid detection. As you get better, you get better weaponry (slingshot, etc., moving up to faster weaponry), while the cameras get more vigilant and more actively trying to catch you in the act. Eventually you start gaining control over the cameras, scoping ahead of you, as well as being able to loop their feeds (becoming a sort of cross between the remote stealth game "Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers" and "Operator's Side", but without the frustrating voice control of the latter). As authorities move in, you have to be more selective about cameras you disable so that you can spy on their positions.
I'm liking this more and more. But there needs to be some gray about it all, even turning dark, such as, as you advance in abilities and the need to protect yourself and the allies you've made, you start to wonder if you're really fighting against the surveillance or becoming Big Brother yourself.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?