There has been a fair amount of press in the last week or so about Louisiana's attempt to lure video game development via tax credits. Broadly speaking, tax credits to capitalize and drive development of industries in new areas is an old idea: biotech, automobile manufacturing, and a raft of other places and spaces. In fact, Louisiana has already tried it with the film industry - with enough success, apparently, for it to proceed with this experiment.
This offers us the opportunity to parse the video game industry...
Is the game industry better or worse to respond to these types of incentives over other industries? True, their talent base is arguably more mobile and compact than many - hence, perhaps, better able to exploit marginal cost advantages whereever they are found. But on the other hand, perhaps the cues to which this industry responds are significantly different.
Might it also be true that lower cost barriers -- tax-relief subsidized or otherwise -- could translate into more experimentation and better quality games in the long run?
I can't remember exactly, but I believe there are similar incentives in some Canadian provinces. For example, I have heard that Quebec is a popular place to set up a game studio, in contrast with Ontario, because of such incentives.
Posted by: nickbotulism | Jan 02, 2005 at 02:12
There seem to be a bunch of places around the world bidding to be the global focus of computer game development. At the Edinburgh games festival, that a number of TNers attended, the local government support body – Scottish Enterprise (www.scottish-enterprise.com) was heavily promoting Scotland as base for development, in fact they have a goal of becoming the ‘computer games centre of the world’.
It sounds a ridiculous aim until you realise that the Grand Theft Auto series is developed by Rock Star North in Edinburgh. Which is an interesting case as such a quintessentially American aesthetic is created by a bunch of people in Northern Britain.
From my limited experience of the games industry I would imagine that like many other knowledge based businesses what is important is an available talent pool hence either things like a bunch of universities relatively near and / or somewhere that social and economic factors that attract geek workers.
I’m not sure about broader cultural factors – the US, Britain and Japan put out a lot of computer games but these countries originate a lot of pop culture that is consumed by a big slice of the world, I can see computer games as being unique in this respect.
Posted by: ren | Jan 03, 2005 at 15:02
From Bloomberg, a transnational example:
Ubisoft Says It Plans to Add 1,000 Workers in Montreal by 2010...
...By 2010, Quebec's provincial government expects to give Ubisoft as much as C$52 million in grants and subsidies and an unspecified amount of tax credits, Economic Development Minister Michel Audet said at the press conference. Canada's federal government will provide C$5 million in development money.
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Feb 15, 2005 at 10:29