Hey, this article is just over a month old, but it's definately worth posting about here anyway! biz.gamedaily.com has an interview with Evelyn Richardson, Executive Director of the Game Developers Association of Australia, on Australia's Role in Next-Gen Game Development. Evelyn believes that Australia is in an ideal position to take advantage of the content crisis expected from next-gen game development by providing fee-for-service work. She discusses the advantages Australia has over other countries in this area...
"ER: The risks associated with development and publishing on the next-generation platforms are top of mind for publishers on these platforms. Australian developers can help to mitigate these risks in the 3 main areas of quality, cost, and time to market.Quality: Australian developers are recognized in the U.S. as being able to produce games as good as any U.S. developer.
Cost: Australian developers deliver more "bang for the buck," which translates to a cost that is 60-70% of what would have to be paid in the U.S.
Time to Market: A product that misses its release date has huge financial repercussions for the publisher. Australian developers are experienced and have mature project management mechanisms in place, which have helped to make Australian developers the most reliable in the world."
Just Great!!
Someone who has never been involved with game development explaining how it should all get done. How many games has Evelyn been invovled with. This idea that government should attract overseas publishers to setup in Australia isn't good for the local industry. It actually creates competition for local developers who cannot compete with large overseas publishers for staff. If a company is actually US or UK owned, it's not Australian. I wonder if there is a hiden agenda here.
I think the GDAA is becoming less and less relevant to the local games industry. If you look carefully you will notice that a lot of the key developers aren't even members of the GDAA anymore ... The IGDA is really what Australia's local games industry is all about now.
It looks as if there are lots of key companies who are members of the GDAA on there website. Do you mean fully paid up members ?
The answers reads like Atari's old business plan.
I don't think the GDAA has done much for the games industry, if anything it has done serious damage over the last 2 years . It's all just smoke and mirrors and no real results. It also takes a lot of credit for other peoples hard work in government and other organisations ... I can't for the life of me understand why the industry would select Evelyn as their representative ... How about someone who actually has some credentials in this area perhaps.
She doesn't need to know anything about the industry. Really it only matters that government thinks she does!! Lets face it government has really messed up with regards to the games industry in Australia.