They've done it – or so they claim. The people at Tiga, the UK video games lobbying body that has since October 2008 been pushing successive governments to give tax breaks to their industry, did a victory dance when George Osborne sat down on Wednesday. That's the obvious conclusion from their celebratory email afterwards saying "Tiga delivers improved R&D tax credits in the budget", which was a "decisive victory for the UK video games industry".
Hurrah! Tiga has finally beaten the boss stage of the Evil Chancellor, which had previously beaten it back time and again – notably last year when it looked like Alistair Darling was going to announce tax breaks, and then reneged. And because it was a change of government, they couldn't even use the save point they'd got to. It was right back to the start.
But now they've won! Well, sort of. Except that in the messages flying out ahead of the budget, Tiga had been saying how they were calling for better R&D breaks – but also tax breaks specifically for the games industry (to help it compete with Canada in particular, but also the US, Korea, Scandinavia and Singapore), measures to support prototype funding, changes to venture capital trusts and the enterprise investment scheme (EIS), and incentives to support "games clusters" of companies.
OK, the EIS did come through, in some form. But the rest of it? Nowhere to be seen. So let's give Tiga two cheers, or perhaps a crouching ovation. Good, but could do better. We should have known that something like this half-hearted measure was coming. Interviewed by MediaGuardian's Dan Sabbagh last week, Jeremy Hunt let slip thoughts on the games industry – you know, the one that contributes £1bn to UK GDP, employs 9,000 skilled development staff, is almost all (85%) outside London, and is in SMEs that the government so needs.
What did Hunt think? "We need to diversify our economy, replicate some of the success of the City," he said – with "the right regulatory framework". What about the tax break? "I don't know if that was the right way to go." Oh, disappointing. But: "we need to offer the video game industry a package as financially competitive as Canada."
This is one where you just can't square the circle. Being competitive with Canada means making the long-term investment of a tax break. R&D credits just won't do it – something Tiga grumpily pointed out in its semi-celebratory email: the tax breaks for games companies in Canada, for example, mean its games industry grew by 33% between 2008 and 2010, while the UK's declined by 9%.
The government long ago stopped investing directly in companies, but it can still nudge the scales when it wants to. It's happy to do it for the record and film industries – witness all the blather about controlling "digital lockers" that can be used to share files (and are invaluable to businesses that need to move big files around). The games industry is just as big.
But of course it isn't 100 years old. Maybe Tiga needs to wait until 2100 for a government that really understands the need for games. Frankly, though, if we have a prime minister and minister for communications who already play games (Angry Birds and Super Mario Galaxy respectively), we could hope for better. Much better.
