Labor promises serious look into Games industry rebate

Company
Game Developers Association of Australia

The Game Developers Association of Australia met today with the Shadow Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Senator Conroy, and as reported on Screenplay, the Senator has promised to take a serious look into the rebate for the local games industry...

(GDAA CEO Greg Bondar) "We are thrilled that Senator Conroy is prepared, should Labor be elected to government, to take the time to assess our industry and give sound consideration to our call for a rebate. This is a positive step forward for our industry."

More details over at Screenplay...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 12/05/07 - 4:08 AMPermalink
  • 1. Dele Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:48:48 EST

    Finally some good news on this issue :)

  • o 1. Anonymous Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:09:21 EST

    It could be an empty promise from another politician that leads to nothing but I guess it is something.

  • + 1. Anonymous Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:19:16 EST

    An empty promise is more than Howard/Costello are offering.

  • 2. Gendo Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:50:01 EST

    Wow........um this was not what I was expecting. I was thinking they most likely would feel the same way as howard does.

  • 3. Anonymous Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:24:37 EST

    Of course they "feel" differently... there's an election coming up ;)

  • 4. Anonymous Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:16:32 EST

    AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  • 5. Anonymous Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:13:05 EST

    (shrugs) Given the fence sitting I've been doing so far, this might be enough to put me on Labour's side.

    It seems like a weird sort of election promise to make, though. Those are usually reserved for the family and elderly or small business contigent - big numbers of voters, in other words. Going after the youth vote - gamers in particular - doesn't make a lot of sense, even if they're desperate. Why go after that demographic when you've got millions of gullible baby boomers voting?

    But heck, even if the promise turns out to be a farce, at least they actually acknowledge the industry. More than what the current government is doing.

  • o 1. Anonymous Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:04:12 EST

    We only know about it because we follow industry news... I imagine they are having similar discussions with other industries, we just don't know about them. To me this is just one more reason to vote Labour. With the amount of stuff we're digging out of the ground and selling to China, they can't possibly stuff the economy up before the next election, and on everything else Rudd > Howard/Costello IMO.

  • + 1. Anonymous Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:05:05 EST

    Whoops, trying to be too clever... that was meant to be Rudd > Howard/Costello ;)

  • 6. Sonic Wang Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:12:00 EST

    Why don't they also look into the OFLC's pig ignorant standing on game classification too...

  • o 1. Anonymous Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:55:20 EST

    That's actually the fault of the South Australian Labor government. All the other states were in favour of an R rating for games but it required a unanimous vote to go through.

  • 7. Chameleon Mon, 5 Nov 2007 18:08:00 EST

    If anyone's interested there's some photo's, audio and a video of this meeting available from the GDAA website. Go to News/Events and Media Releases (sorry I can't post the link!).

    The video is worth a look. Senator Conroy certainly seems to be on board for not just the games industry, but the future of Australian IT and communication to bring Australia out of the 'digital dark ages', so we don't fall further behind the rest of the developed world.

    Also you get a fairly good look at the inside of the Tantalus studio, if that's of interest to anyone.