GameSpot AU interviewed GDAA President Tom Crago at GCAP on the weekend who has released GDAA findings that the Australian games industry is now worth $130 million, up 15% since 2006.
Employment in the industry has also risen, with 400 more people employed in the industry than last year, taking the figure to 2000, an astonishing rate of growth. The Australian games industry has never been so healthy.
Tom puts this down to an upswell in the games industry overall due to the phenominal success of the Wii and DS, broadening the gaming demographic, but also because of the world's increasing recognition of Australia as a world class development destination, due in part to the recent success of original IP's such as Pony Friends DS and Puzzle Quest and first party titles such as Viva Pinata: Party Animals.
Tom Crago:
I think this year has been remarkable for that diversity. On the one hand we have a title like Fury which is one of the most ambitious MMOGs to have been released this year. At the other end of the spectrum, we have an absolutely thriving mobile development industry in Australia. You only have to look at the success of Firemint and Iron Monkey in Australia to appreciate that we're world class in that space. In the middle of the spectrum there are titles like Pony Friends from Tantalus--that game has a good shot at selling one million units, which is pretty remarkable for an Australian made game. Of course, we have the absolute smash hit Puzzle Quest from Infinite Interactive.
1. Anonymous Tue, 20 Nov
And its all happened with no government help. Man just think of how much better its going to get when the new government start's helping.
Only the greens have said they will support the industry, and i highly doubt they will get into power.
Labor has only promised that they will 're-evaluate' the industry and MIGHT consider giving us the rebate.
so there is no guarantee the new government will help
Yeah, but Rudd actually understands technology beyond what was made in 1950.
if this is going to be a more permanent trend, then the government had better start investing in original IP and smaller developers otherwise we're just going to get steamrolled by china and india in the end anyway.
I agree the government should invest in our industry as I think it would pay back well if nurtured correctly however how did you see the government investing in original IP and more importantly why?
Original IP's are great when they work and massive sink holes of doom when they don't.
Many publishers are actively turned off by original IP's anyway as they already have a tonne of there own ideas they want built which they don't have to wrestle for ownership and profits over.
Remember ideas are free and a dime a dozen, imagine for a second you were the CEO of EA or Activision then think on these 2 senarios:
[1.] You have the option of making your own IP and franchising it out to a smaller developer(s) in Australia/China/India/Russia for lower costs while maintaining all the rights to the IP and maximising profits.
or
[2.] You can directly finance the creation of a new and untested franchise from an Australian/Chinese/Indian/Russian developer. You still possibly pay less for development but now you may not access to IP rights, royalties or future capital.
I know which I'd be easier about if I had 10+ development studios I already owned and each of them could rattle off 600 good game ideas that would sell ok in our current market.
Also why develop other peoples IP's if theres even a slim chance of failure when you can do it within your own company structure and mitigate or offset any issues that arise?
I always hear people going on about original IP's, why don't we make more original IP's in Australia, well its because because it's a ridiculously hard sell and its even harder to keep the IP if you want to entice the publisher.
We are not the US of A, we do not have a base of sales or an industry large enough to self fund so we sell our talents to the highest bidder, one day we may be at a level where we can support hundreds of original IP's but not right now.
No one wants them except the more hardcore Australian gaming public and they don't even rate on the sales charts, hell I'd wager the whole mainstream gaming public of Australia and NZ combined isn't even a paragraph in the major publishers yearly fiscal breakdown.
40% rebate would more likely help the really big developers who have overseas backers or venture backing. Remember its not a grant system. You still need to find funding so nothing changes. There will be a lot more industry jobs however so that's a good thing.
"..40% rebate would more likely help the really big developers who have overseas backers or venture backing..."
Could you explain further?
A) I don't know of a big Australian "owned" dev house who has overseas or venture backing.
B) And if there are then how many of these "Big Developers" would you believe are valid for the proposed rebate?
C) The biggest ones i know of are:
Creative Assembly - Sega - international support
THQ - international support
Pandemic - EA - international support
Krome - independent - self funded or publisher funded
Irrational - 2K Australia - International support
Out of the above I can't think of one big developer except maybe Krome who might be a valid candidate for governmental support as the majority of them are owned by or at the very least financed by international parent companies.
Look I may be wrong as I don't know the nature of whether an international child company can be classed as an Australian entity but if they aren't wouldn't that put them out of the running for tax payer funded support?
Correct me if I'm wrong though. =]
And anyway, anything that can help the Australian indie dev's scene even a little would be a start.
If they scoped well and planned ahead the tax offests that come from the proposed rebate could enable a small to medium sized developer to retain more money in there pocket from publishers after a title wraps up.
Money to continue research and development, to fish for new publishers, to keep on staff, to buy equipment and middleware... etc.
You have to remember that downtime with no cash can really hurt a small companies growth patterns, they lose good staff, it can disrupt or even kill research which is costly because you don't ever get paid to become smarter. W
orst case the slow time cause them to close down.
And considering most Australian developers have to cut the profit margin quite close anyway to be competitive in a world market this would do nothing but improve chances for startups and those teetering on the edge of progress to step one foot further.
Rebates or any other government help could give those good companies who never quite get a stable footing a small sliver of breathing space to grow our industry.
I think it's the smaller dev's who'll benefit the most, they'll finally get a bit more financial stabilty to work with.
The companies you mention would all get the rebate if it existed. That's exactly the point. As long as the production was in Australia then it would be ok. Same goes for the current batch of studios doing work for publishers. Why do you think all these local companies are pushing for this. To help out the little guys :) lol
Why doesn't someone start a distribution studio in Australia & some other country's. See this is what I don't understand about Australia. We seem to suck at all the cool industry's film/videogame's it boil's my sole. Even third world/second world country's are doing better than us in those two department's.
Thier government (in some cases) puts billions of dollars into thier game development industries. Look at Korea as an example.