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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?
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"
Hopefully British style humour would come under 'culturally British'
signature is pants
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 don't know but that game sounds pretty freaking sweet.
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.
Your original post strongly implied that support for "British culture" was closely related to support for the BNP, which is incorrect.
The case, "nationalism = racism" has come up before, and in England it is official policy, something which many English people find insulting. The Welsh and Scottish cultural history is celebrated and preserved, as are the cultures of recent immigrants, but the English are mischaracterised as racists if they show any national pride. For example, if you display the traditional St George flag (red cross on white background), people will tend to assume you are a BNP supporter. Display the Scottish flag and you're regarded as a proud Scotsman. It frustrates me that supposed "intellectuals" regard this as right and proper, never questioning the groupthink. Hence I try to challenge that attitude wherever I see it.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
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();
I don't think that's far from the truth.
What people seem to be missing is that so many games out there right now are full of American culture, to the point they perhaps don't even realise it.
A culturally British game may simply be a game like any other where you drive on the left hand side of the road and road signs are British, where accents are British, where things are spelt in a British way, where food is British (fish and chips!), where vehicles are those commonly driven in Britain, where you get chased by the met, SO19 or SOCA rather than the cops, SWAT or the FBI.
This would differ from many current games where vehicles are often American, accents are American, food is American, laws are American and so on.
People seem to be spinning this as some kind of racist point of view but quite the opposite, what they seem to be trying to do is bring more diversity to gaming and I don't think it's just the British that should do this. I actually like the idea of playing a game that's themed in a different way than the most common American style. In games where they have been themed in a different part of the world I have actually learnt something about those cultures in the process of playing through - even if it's just learning the name of a new type of food that's used as a health pickup in said game.
Adding a bit of cultural diversity might actually allow kids playing these games to learn that there are other cultures out there than just the ones defined by game developers as the FBI chasing, burger eating games we have now that are often used by game developers to portray the American setting we're commonly handed.
I can't help but think it might be quite fun to race round the streets of downtown bombay or whatever with a completely different style of everything from clothing to accents rather than driving round Manhattan etc. all the time. There is nothing wrong with your usual American stylised games, they in themselves are good - but a bit of a change wouldn't hurt now and again.
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.