Reality Panic

The big news in the UK dev scene is how the government snubbed the game industry by not including any tax breaks to support game development in the next budget. In part citing that the case made by industry for a tax break was unconvincing, as well as the overall tough economic climate.

While industry reps are in rage, they should not be overly surprised as they themselves claimed it would “never happen”. On a panel at Develop in Brighton, they stated it was an impossible task, but on principle they had to fight the fight.

It is the same panel that I got into a bit of a shouting match, blaming them for using the tax break fight as a distraction from doing real (hard) work on things they could effect and could have an impact on the UK industry.

I also made the bold claim that if a tax break did happen, it would have literally no impact on the UK situation. Meaning, a tax break is not some kind of all-in-one solution that would all of a sudden resolve all the challenges the UK community is facing.

As an example of progress, at roughly the same time, it was announced that £10million is being invested in the game industry to support education and the development of prototypes and original IP. Similar initiatives are popping up across the country.

Now we’re talking. Now we’re getting somewhere. This approach speaks more to the ecosystem nature of the industry and working to build things out and support efforts at a more organic level. Though, this gets marginal coverage/attention versus the tax debate…

Even Canada, with all its national and provincial aids, is at risk. Blamed for “buying the video game industry“, Canada needs to build a more holistic strategy to foster the community from top to bottom - not just chasing down big publishers to set up shop…

PS: Does anyone have details on the UK “brain drain” to Canada. UK reps continuously claim that they are losing their talent to Canada. But, I’ve never seen any real data or research. Is this a valid claim? Or, mainly based on anecdotes and really, all the UK talent is just shifting to some other sector in the UK?

Game dev education in the UK has come under attack over the past couple of years. Despite great efforts by many schools, the ones mucking things up are somewhat ruining the entire UK reputation.

Some of this has to do with raw “quality control”, for which the SkillSet accreditation scheme will help. But, largely, it comes from a huge disconnect between the academic world and industry. Partially due to developers’ aloofness when it comes to academic collaboration; partially due to academia not even bothering to check in (ie, to get context/relevance, guidance, etc).

In that regard, I’m happy to see that pixel-lab is organizing another edition of GAMES:EDU to take place alongside the Develop conference in Brighton at the end of July. This will be the third EDU event I attend. It is an important/rare opportunity for industry to connect with academia. And while the set lectures/panels are great, the most enlightening part has always been when attendees get around the table to discuss specific issues among themselves.

Admittedly, the IGDA has not done as much as it should to better reach out to UK/Euro educators. We’ve had a lot of success in North America, but need to bring some of our EdSIG pixie dust abroad. I’ll be sure to bring a pouch of it to Brighton ;)

(Supposed to be on vacation this week, but did do some game industry news surfing and couldn’t help but get down some thoughts on unions…)

The bug “U” word has come up again, this time floated by design legend Ron Gilbert during a Gamasutra interview. He mentions that if the industry moves to a more “floating freelance” structure, union type glue will be needed. To elaborate on his reservation, here are my personal thoughts on why unions - as traditionally structured - will have a hard time taking hold in game development:

• Culture Mismatch: Generally speaking unions are a tool for leveling/equalizing labor, which is a direct mismatch with the game industry’s meritocracy oriented culture. Further, unions have traditionally just not done well in tech and knowledge based sectors.
• Lack of Standards: As noted by Gilbert, tech is still moving fast. Meaning, there are no standards the same way that the majority of movies are made with the same types of cameras, etc. And, it is not just a tech issue, but all kinds of standards: job titles, job roles, processes, pipelines, file formats, engines, platforms, etc, etc. Unions generally operate in an environment of very precise/predictable standards.
• Poor Process: Despite lots of progress on the project management front, overall, game production processes are still evolving heavily. At noted by Gilbert, a Hollywood per-project approach would require developers to be a whole lot better at scheduling, resource management, etc.
• Wrong Time Span: Ok, this one is more about the Hollywood process than unions per se… But, large scale games still take too long to develop, making it tough to assemble talent on the fly (”hey, I need you for a gig up in Wisconsin for the next 18 months, cool?”) As side note, this is also why some of the state-based government tax incentives modeled after a Hollywood production model have not attracted much action…
• Hotspot/Geographic Proximity: Traditional unions are mostly based on physical locations (think the big Ford manufacturing plant in Detroit) with the specific workers in that specific location/office being unionized. The Hollywood guild system works differently since it is a freelance workforce, but even that relies heavily on the physical proximity and clustering of projects and talent (ie, that’s why Hollywood is in Hollywood).

Anyway, those are some quick thoughts on the topic. Note that these bullets are “neutral” in that I’m not saying if unions are good or bad or useful for game development (that’s another post for another day). Rather, I’m just stating some factors as to why I personally believe unions/guilds will have a hard time taking hold in the game industry.

And, BTW, there’s totally something insightful to say in linking this to the recent news about Ken Levine renegotiating his contract with Take-Two. But hey, I’m on vacation, so I’ll let you figure it out!

As noted previously, after my Bully debate with the Canadian Teachers Federation, I reached out to them asking if we could be a part of the solution (as opposed to the perception that games are part of the problem). I’m happy to say that I found my way to the head of their cyberbullying group and we are arranging to speak in more detail, etc. More on that as progress is made.

In terms of being “part of the solution” a few recent examples crossed my path:

• Ruckus Nation: HopeLab’s global competition to get kids moving announced their award winners.
• Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference: CMU is using the event to determine if games can be used to enhance the peacemaking process.
• Games For Health Conference: Now in its fourth iteration is on for early May…
• ESA Foundation Scholarships: …with a focus on getting more women and minorities into game development.

Of course, we have the ever popular Child’s Play Charity raising millions to help sick children. As well as more novel efforts like OneBigGame to create unique games for the benefit of children’s charities.

And, that’s just off the top of my head. There’s a bunch more stuff like this going on that I’m barely aware of…

I’ve got a Bully interview/debate set for tomorrow morning on CBC News:Sunday with Mary-Lou Donnelly of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. I tried to punt this one to journalist Steve Tilley, as I thought he did a great job editorializing on the irony surrounding the teachers’ condemnation of the release of Bully: Scholarship Edition (but he wasn’t available :(

So, I’m doing a bit more research and prep, and trying to understand the core of the teachers’ concern/complaint. In reviewing the CTF’s official statement, they spend most of their words describing how problematic bullying is. OK, no debate there, bullying is a serious and complex issue that needs society’s ongoing attention.

But what about the game itself? It is quite evident that none of the teachers actually played the game or bothered to do much research on it - seemingly defaulting to their likely model of all games being bad. Not only do they misrepresent what the game is about (along with content that doesn’t actually exist), they miss the whole point about the player-character being a kind of anti-bully. That many of the missions are to protect the weaker characters, and connect with the various factions at school. That you need to attend (and excel at) class in order to get ahead. And that actually being a bully has negative repercussions that slow down your progress.

The saddest part of all this is that the teachers are missing a prime opportunity to make progress. Their statement laments that the game “undermine[s] efforts to create safe schools”. Whereas, I’d argue that teachers could have leveraged Bully to both better understand the social politics of high school (by embodying a troubled teen) and open a much needed dialog with students about bullying.

Can we blame them? While some argue that Bully could have been an even more scathing critique of school life, the challenge is that many simply do not look to games for meaningful social commentary (like The Breakfast Club, for example). The mental model (certainly for digital immigrant teachers) is still stuck in the realm of frivolous toy as opposed to valuable cultural artifact…

Update 1: Clint Hocking offers to play Bully with the CTF to understand/evaluate it (book club style). Also, after the TV debate I contacted the CTF to open discussion and find ways to work together… I’ll post updates if/as things develop…

Update 2: Had a nice chat with Mary-Lou Donnelly from the CTF. She’s going to put me in touch with the folks heading up their anti-cyberbullying efforts (which lead the charge to ban Bully). Ultimately, we all want to stop bullying and build safe/effective schools, and there’s no doubt that games can play an important role in that effort. We’ll see what happens next…

By chance, I consumed the following bits pretty much back-to-back (my brain is still churning…):

• Awesomely engaging Lawrence Lessig talk from TED on user generated content (thanks Kim!)
• David Edery’s thoughts on a new approach to licensing IP
• Raph Koster’s big brain dump slides from GDC Prime
• Denis Dyack on the one console future and open standards

UGC * IP = culture remixed!