Back in May, the second Cross-Party Group On Video Games Technology took place at Holyrood. It was very well attended, with four MSPs in the room, along with representatives from UKIE and TIGA and around 20 companies from across the country.
The structure of the meeting was a little disjointed, as only a few days before the meeting, the European Commission decided that it would have to investigate the issue of tax breaks in the UK. As the primary focus of the meeting had been tax breaks, this meant the agenda opened up a little and allowed far more questions from the floor.
The Scottish Games Network was asked to put together a brief presentation introducing the Scottish Games Industry appropriate for an audience who were unlikely to know a great deal about the interactive sector in Scotland.
This covered the evolution of the industry, the distribution and type of companies and very briefly, the issues faced by the majority of games companies in the country.
After the meeting we updated and annotated the presentation, so it makes sense without the narration and sent it to the co-convenors of the group for distribution to all of the attendees.
The rather excellent delegation from the University of the West Scotland/The Computer Games Journal took extremely detailed minutes, which you can read here…
2ndCPGp_VideoGamesTech_minutes
However, parliamentary matters and running the country are probably quite challenging, so the presentation and the minutes have not yet been circulated. Rather than allow the event and the sense of progress to dissipate, we thought sharing the outcome of the group would be useful and would allow the wider industry to discuss, debate and act on the information from the meeting.
You can enjoy the presentation here. Bear in mind it was created for an audience who don’t know the industry particularly well and are not developers, or involved in games companies…
As yet there’s no date for a follow-up meeting and no confirmation of the new co-convenors, though these will probably follow in due course.
In the meantime, feel free to like, link, tweet, blog, debate and discuss the topics and issues highlighted at the meeting in the comments, or on the Scottish Games Network LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ or Twitter profiles.
A huge thank you again to the CGJ/UWS team for the minutes, you made this post possible.
It’s University of the West of Scotland rather than University of the West Coast, but I have to say the latter is a good name. Kind of a surfer vibe.
Gah! That’s my fault entirely. It is kinda cool, but thanks for the correction…
A fine speedy overview of the scene. Who were the other three MSPs in attendance?