The Australian games industry has been saved from Senator George Brandis, but it remains to be seen if the new Minister for the Arts, Mitch Fifield, will be better.
There has been no indication that the sole initiative that the previous Labor government had instituted for the games industry, the Australian Interactive Games Fund, would be reinstalled, after the previous prime minister, Tony Abbott, with Brandis, dumped it in their first budget.
Fifield is well known as a staunch opponent of things such as expenditure on cycling infrastructure, so it remains to be seen how innovative his thinking is. But the games industry sorely needs an innovative thinker as it works to gain acknowledgement as an artistic — rather than purely business — endeavour.
Working on the assumption that Fifield is willing to listen to the games industry, and the submissions to the recently-closed ‘Future of Australia’s Video Game Development Industry’ inquiry are taken seriously, what might we see the Turnbull government do to begin developing the industry again?
On the one hand, it’s easy to argue that the government could simply finance projects on an ad hoc basis, using a pool of fund money to assist developers that successfully apply for a grant. This would echo some funding models to other art forms, and a portion of the money from the original Australian Interactive Games Fund was allocated for this purpose too.
However, with the growth of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding models, games developers have more avenues for financing individual projects than they had previously, and this is perhaps part of the justification by which Abbott and Brandis had used to discontinue the Australian Interactive Games Fund (and potentially will be Fifield’s excuse to not reinstate it).
But this wasn’t the real strength of the Australian Interactive Games Fund. A number of other developers were able to secure funding across a number of years under the Australian Interactive Games Fund’s Enterprise Program, with the goal to use the money not just to produce individual games, but build sustainable game development businesses.
One of these businesses to receive Enterprise-level funding was Uppercut Games, which secured three years of funding. With popular titles such as Epoch and Epoch 2, and a newly-released game, Submerged, really pushing to top-grade production values, Uppercut Games would not have been able to achieve what it has without having been awarded the specific funding model across multiple years, the company’s CEO, Andrew James, said.
“Being funded across multiple years has added a great deal of stability to the business,” James said. “It allowed us to take on full time staff instead of just hiring on a per project contract basis. We have been able to do some longer term planning around future projects and sequels. We have also been able to invest in things like learning the technical and publishing process for shipping on multiple platforms and game consoles, and know we can re-use that expertise on the next titles we make.
“The Interactive Games fund gave us the ability to hire on more local staff and make games with a larger scope than had been possible in the past. We were able to hire on four additional full time developers for Submerged, with the knowledge that we could cover some of their salaries with funds from the Interactive Games Fund. These were a mix of industry veterans with a lot of experience and to a recent graduate with only a few years under his belt as a game developer. We were also able to use the funds for music and concept art, again sourced from local Australian talent,” he said.
The key themes from the submissions to the government
With 99 submissions by its close last Friday, the Future of Australia’s Video Game Development Industry inquiry has been seen by the games industry as a major opportunity to, finally, develop a dialogue with the Australian government. With the original Australian Interactive Games Fund having been dropped without consultation with the industry, this would also represent the first time the current LNP government would be paying attention to the industry.
Submissions were consistent in noting the lack of government funding and the urgent need to re-establish funding models. The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (iGEA), for example, noted in its submission:
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the studios that were recipients of the initial funds were able to leverage those funds for commercial success. One studio, Flat Earth Games, noted that initial AIGF funding allowed it to bring its successful Australian release of Towncraft to new platforms and overseas markets. Based on that success Flat Earth Games has since developed three further interactive games. Such examples provide an initial positive indication of the potential of a self-funding model of seed assistance for interactive games development.”
iGEA went further in its submission to encourage the government to help facilitate “innovation” clusters — or collaborative areas where young game developers could work in close proximity to one another, and leverage each other’s talents to help build the quality of the games produced by the collective.
As it noted in its submission: “Hubs of this nature create a centre of activity for allowing visiting companies and organisations including potential investors to support localised development initiatives. The development of innovation clusters is a strategy that has been used with success in many of the Scandinavian countries, including Finland, which boasts seven regional games clusters, many funded by support through the European Union.”
Another common thread among submissions was the recommendation that the government extend the producer offset that filmmakers can apply for to the games industry. Sydney-based developer, Nnooo, a recipient of government funding in the past, noted in its submission:
“The producer offset enjoyed by the Australian film industry attracts foreign investment and foreign filmmakers to Australia as well as benefitting the local film industry with a tax offset of up to 40% for qualifying expenditure. This has been a hugely successful program for the film industry for many years. A similar scheme for video game production costs would be likely to attract significant foreign investment in video game development to Australia and to make the setup of home-grown studios more attractive.”
This same producer’s offset was recommended in the iGEA submission, and supported by the submission of large global studios, including EA.
Another theme of the 99 submissions is that for Australia’s games industry to again return to the healthy state it was before the GFC, it is important that the government assist with it being globally competitive when economic conditions do not favour Australian developers, and work to keep and develop talent within the country at a time where the “brain drain” outside of Australia is severe.
As Andrew James noted in Uppercut Games’ own submission to the senate inquiry: “Retention of workforce skills and knowledge here in Australia. We personally know over a dozen people each with over a decade of game development experience who are now working overseas because of a lack of employment opportunities in Australia”.
One can only hope that Turnbull’s new-look government recognises the potential of a “lost generation” in the Australian games industry that will relegate it to the periphery, and instead provides the adequate infrastructure and support the industry needs to reattain its global leadership position.
[box]Main image: A scene from Submerged.[/box]