Gov to the Rescue?
Oddly enough, government may be an agent of salvation for the games industry. I say odd because so much gov effort goes into banning/censorship. While this is sadly still true, somewhere on the other end of the building, gov folks are looking at ways to support and build their local industries.
You just need to look at Victoria's "Game Plan" initatiatives, or the efforts made in the UK to get a sense the good work being done. Similar initiatives and support programs abound in places like Montreal, Korea, Brisbane, France, Sweden, etc.
While this is all great and commendable, I doubt it will actually help with the overall criticism over the lack of innovation and sequelitis in the industry. The majority of these support programs simply feed into the existing mainstream industry, helping developers get a publishing deal, provide access to expensive dev kits or set up missions to visit conferences in California.
I had several meetings with various gov reps from around the world during my trip to E3. I advised most of them to move away from the above models, or to at least look at an alternative/additional approach.
I suggested that gov support programs (or at least the ones coming from the more culturally oriented gov arms) should being going into supporting games that would not otherwise be made, or accepted by the mainstream games industry. Think more experimental stuff, more culturally diverse content, think non-mainstream, non-licensed content.
This should be the stuff that's happening on the fringe of the industry; the underground of the mainstream. This should be the stuff that's on the margins that helps to refresh the center in one big ecosystem.
Hypothetically speaking, where would you put down your funding/supporting resources and initiatives? I'd fund an Indie Game Jam style lab as a starting point!
Posted on May 25, 2004 05:04 PM