One of the greatest threats facing the UK industry at present is certainly the shortage of suitably trained graduates. Also, many of our top talent are going abroad to places such as Canada where companies are offered [more appealing] incentives.

This is certainly true, the UK Job Market is trending way too heavily toward computer services and not enough towards generating and supporting it's own business AND recreational software companies.

I think the industry needs to turn them down on this offer. Just seems like another form of control to me. "We will support you, as long as you only make games for kids." Feh.

this seems like a reasonable offer, as long as that between the lines, there are not hidden strings attached

Wait - didn't Cameron just sam videogames?

BlackIce:

It was hardly a slam. Cameron said 'maybe all the violence in culture isn't a great thing for kids to see. Movies, TV, music and games all have some responsibility to culture.'

That's not a slam. That's a polite point. GP was being very, very sensationalist.

@ Erik

Just because a game is not bloody, violent, sexual or attempts to challenge the ways you think docent mean they are kids games. I have plenty of fun with games like Elite Beat Agents, Guitar Hero, Monkey Island, etc. One could call them kids games but they are meant for everyone, not just kids.

Also, I can't see how this is a form of control. The government may give developers an option to save some money if they make games which are not violent or sexual. They are not forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to do, hence they are not controlling anyone. It's a good idea to help some devs. that are just starting up or have been around for a while. If the up and comers choose to take this government assistance they can make the less violent games now. If said developer has bigger plans to make a game geared towards the older crowd they can do so after they gain a foothold financially which allows them to ditch the government assistance!

Sorry for the double post, but to clarify on that statement, take Direct X as an example.

DirectX is a series of extensions that control your Grpahics card, the card drivers are written by the manufacturer, DirectX by Microsoft. If you want to write a game that uses the DirectX extensions, you don't need to pay Microsoft any money, but you are STILL using their software in order to help write the game. Already part of your game is absolutely dependent on code written by Microsoft in order to be used. Admittedly you could (And I would strongly recommend) swap to OpenGL, but then Vista support for it has been pretty ropey, and I don't 100% buy the 'official' explanations that the drivers are taking longer to develop, though I suppose it's pretty possible.

It's already a complete mess of Rights, Licences and other Red-Tape for any company that uses code that even resembles someone elses', if the government want to make game developers' lives easier, they need to look just as hard at the rights regarding things like Open Source software, which smaller companies etc can find invaluable, but which larger companies would dearly love to destroy altogether, much like the 'Magic Circle' and their fear of rogue magic acts giving away trade secrets, after all, if anyone could do it, they wouldn't be able to charge as much.

Now, I'll admit that Microsoft create some of the best development frameworks I've used, Visual Studio is an excellent piece of software for what it does, as long as you don't get carried away with their own 'Microsoft Specific' commands, but that's where a lot of the confusion over software is arising these days, everyone knows that it's illegal to copy software, but what about the more murky worlds of Freeware, Shareware etc, that needs cleaning up if smaller companies are to stand a chance.

I don't see a big problem with strings and hidden agreements. Funcom received aid in developing Dreamfall from the Norwegian government and the only noticeable thing they've added to the game is the option of using Norwegian dialog and subtitles.

@Dr.Gash

Mmm hmm. We really need the media backing our version of the Republicans.