Brit game devs WILL get tax relief for, er, EastEnders Game and Legend of Slough Brussels has given its blessing to a Westminster scheme which will grant generous tax breaks to small video game production firms which pass a controversial "cultural test". The European Commission launched an enquiry into the government's tax plans last year because it didn't think the booming games industry really needed a …
Clearly either:
*) Pub management simulator - try to keep ownership of The Vic for more than a month.
*) Dating Sim - just how complicated can the familial relationships get between the incestuous members of Albert Square?
*) Get Me To Manchester - how quickly can you get yourself into a situation where the only recourse is to leave for Manchester?
Coronation Street game options:
*) Mini Cab simulator - can you scrape by on the meager takings from the mini cab? Manage your money so you have enough to enjoy in the Rovers - but don't have too much or you won't be able to drive!
*) Factory Simulator - I'm seeing this like Skool Daze where you try to do as little work as possible, gossip - and go to the Rovers.
*) Find the Cat - where is that ginger tabby? Think Where's Waldo but wandering around Corrie.
ISTR a driving game called The Getaway on the PS3 (or possibly the PS2) being set in London - and it was pretty good, if memory serves. (I probably still have it, somewhere).
So despite the mickey taking, there are existing games that would have qualified if they were being written now.
Perhaps it's intended to fight the total cultural conquest the bloody yanks have been allowed to pull off due to the death of British film and the fact that British games are basically carbon copies of american ones. I think you'd be hard pushed to find much difference other than the accent between British and American kids these days.
As an example of what could be done in retaliation:- A Dr Who game (very popular franchise, even in the US) which visits past events that the American's have re-written in the popular imagination via hollywood and while the characters play through the plot unfolds it shows what actually happened other than the hollywood history. This is valuable because kids don't read history books to find out what actually happened, and assume that the Americans actually base their games and media on something approaching truth.
Other cultural counterattacks could easily be mounted along similar lines.
excuse me? we've only bashed germans a couple of times in the last hundred years. up until then we've been on pretty good terms with them.
no. we bash the french. we always have done, we always will do. even when we were bashing germans, we took time out to give the french a sly kick in the ass, on the pretence we were stopping the germans from stealing their stuff and a lot of french ships suddenly sank with their crews still on them. we've bashed the french and they've bashed us back for nearly a THOUSAND years and it isn't going to change EVER.
i'm looking for funding for my new game, where the object is to buy up loads of nearly abandoned french villages and open up greasy fish and chip shops in them, while avoiding crazed tractor-driving, garlic breathing zombies armed with rotten onions and incomprehensible black and white films. any donations?
anon for obvious reasons, i don't want to be beaten to death with stale french bread sticks, tyvm.
"excuse me? we've only bashed germans a couple of times in the last hundred years. up until then we've been on pretty good terms with them."
I think we have the opportunity to do both. Our modern culture involves bashing the Krauts, and the culture in our DNA over thousands of years involves bashing the Frogs. Both are vibrant, living trends, readily exemplified in recent British art - for example Flushed Away was suitably Franco-phobic, and Chicken Run equally respectful to our German friends, yet doing so masterfully, without a single German accent.
I'm German and I'm all for bashing the french in video games.
But remember, the Brits never actually bashed the Germans in a meaningful way. The land of the brits would've been destroyed in WW1 and 2 were it not for Burger King land from overseas.
Here in Germany we have this saying: "Das Leben ist kein Frankreichfeldzug" (Roughly translated it means "Life isn't easy"). And as is well known in every realm: German's don't get humor. We might just start our own culture checklist!
" The land of the brits would've been destroyed in WW1 and 2 were it not for Burger King land from overseas."
What, no mention of them damned Russkies who Hun got so annoyed with they went a bit Harpic and spunked loads and loads of peeps and stuff on?
'Kin Merkins were just a bunch of wasteful show-offs (so my Dad told me) who decided that they just had to use a second nuke as they had one hanging about doing nothing.
GTA NI?
Now the real map would suit the usual Rockstar game mechanic of limiting you to part of the map for the first part of the game, as (unless the situation has changed in the last 5 or so years), there are only a couple of bridges over the river bann(its a river that flows north from lough Neagh to the north coast, basically separating Derry/Londonderry from Belfast).
Would the gaming community appreciate a game that, if rendered accurately, most common crimes are bulldozing ATMs and breaking into old peoples homes and assaulting/raping/stealing at four in the morning.
As for Police problems (Officer Tenpenny, anyone) se this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-26642097
Also any wargame and any CIV style game as after all we took over 2/3rds of the planet at the end of a rifle at one point. Chuck in SimCity style games as all the EU countries did a lot of building to go along with the colonizing.
Lets see football,rugby,F1, MotoGP and cricket are covered in the UK & EU by large fan bases so thats culturally significant. Flight sims are in as aviation is a big field for Europe and shaped our culture (by importing it from the USA and flying people out to places), anything with boats is also a big one.
Right whats left? Driving games should be fine, hard to argue EU manufacturers have not had an impact on culture. Anything involving crime should also be fine as the way that is handled impacts a country's culture significantly. Sci-fi, Horror etc all EU members have some form of home grown scene.
Erm there has got to be genre's it doesn't apply to but surely you can twist anything into being "culturally significant" when you kind of need that anyway to have a market for the game in the first place? Even "South American Taxi Driver Simulator 2014" would sell within the EU (but the link for funding is a bit tenuous)
You are a bumptious leader of a Scottish Government, with a trusty sidekick. (Note to games devs - give them some funny names for the younger players - fish, for example.)
The game starts off with an independence referendum whose result is not pre-determined.
Then, depending on the result, you have to try to continue to govern Scotland and keep it solvent, regardless of whether it is independent or not. You have to negotiate with the evil government of your neighbour, Etonia, for money and other resources, and you have to get yourself re-elected every four years.
The game is open-ended, but there are various scenarios which will bring it to a halt:
- you lose an election
- nuclear catastrophe at Dounreay or Faslane
- the Etonians invade and successfully capture Edinburgh (although there is an alternative scenario in which the game starts with them already there, and you have to drive them out)
- you sell the country to a consortium led by Bernie Ecclestone, a Russian oligarch and the Emir of Qatar.
Overall design concept: Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Artwork: Allan Ramsay (people) and William McTaggart (landscapes)
Storylines: Sir Walter Scott and Irvine Welsh
Music: The Peatbog Faeries, Susan Boyle, and the Shotts and Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band.
A Wee Eck Production.
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm sorry but am I the only one who thinks this is an utter waste of MY money that could have been spent on hospitals and doctors and no-win-no-fee lawyers' legal aid money to sue the NHS and all that other tosh the media spout?
If a 'british game' gets a tax break why not British umbrellas, British Beef, British shoes, British parsnips, British condoms, British bombers, British pregnancies?
There's a stink in the tax department ... Revolt I say!
"But I thought that extreme and violent porn was illegal?"
I think for it to be illegal it has to be for the sexual gratification of the accused. So, according to the CPS own guidelines, if the scene is in a film subject to BBFC classifcation, then it allowed. However, "The exclusion does not apply in respect of images contained within extracts from classified films which must reasonably be assumed to have been extracted solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal. "
So you see, the ugly harridans behind this law are happy so long as it is not enjoyed, but enjoying it makes it a crime. More of the sort of shit headed law making that this country has been subject to for many decades now.
Everyone seems to be joking about British culture, but there's plenty of scope for culturally British games.
Look at GTA London...
More seriously, there are bucket loads of FPS games that focus on US military tactics and structures, which is very different to the British military.
So, I can see this being a good incentive for some British fun!
Well, what about "Battle of Jutland: Crossing the T"?
You take your post on the bridge of the dashing battlecruiser Indefatigable... Err, no, let's say - Invincible. Ah, no, scratch this. You are the captain of the Queen Mary and... Oh, crap! There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."
There certainly was, and with our shells. But a tactical defeat became a strategic victory, which was crucial in throttling Germany's economy and ending WW1. I'm rather proud that a relative of mine was a stoker on the Grand Fleet. 'course, that was in the days when our Navy actually had more than a pitiful number of ships. These days if we did something like the Zeebrugge raid we'd find we had no Navy left.
I would not call that a defeat though - the High Seas Fleet was stopped, turned back and never went out into the Atlantic theatre again... Battlecruiser losses, yes, they were high, but largely self-inflicted through incautious propellant drills, not through tactical mistakes or the lack of fighting spirit.
"I'm rather proud that a relative of mine was a stoker on the Grand Fleet."
So you should be, by right!
Well I have played a few with British cast, and also UC3 had a section in London which was fun.
The Motorstorm series although set around the world had a LOT of Britishness in it, one of my favourite vehicles was based on a Bowler Wildcat, and the titles for Pacific Rift feature one of the Invincible class carriers.
I also theatened a boy who got stupid by mocking up the cover of an Eastenders game complete with Playstation logos, and telling him it would be his next and only game.
1) X-Factor First Person Shooter, where you shoot crap singers and Cowell.
2) SAS stealth shooter, you play as an SAS member.
3) An open world car game with European cars and you drive on the LEFT (Imagine Burnout Paradise with British and European exotica and you do not head on crash every thirty seconds), suggest idealised country A Roads, surrounding a modern city dual carriageways.
4) A tank game where you drive a Challenger 2 in the desert and wipe out all oncomers.
5) Eastenders FPS, in fact an FPS of any soap
6) 1980s cop game where you play a cop based on Gene Hunt.
I will think of more
Has anyone looked at the test? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could get most of the points without any Britishness involved (and little reference to European culture(s) either):
A (ii) - 3 points for "undetermined location" e.g. space
B (i) - 4 points if lead characters from undetermined location e.g. aliens
D 4 points if mainly in English (most games already do all dialog in English)
6 - up to 8 points if staff are 'qualifying persons'. I guess this means EEA citizens? So as long as the game is done mainly in EEA it doesn't have to be very cultural at all? In fact, the project lead, composer and scriptwriters could all be Americans (or Chinese) provided the rest of the team worked in any European country - and then the proposed alien game (or fantasy or abstract angry-birds rip-off game) qualifies for a full 16 points.
This sounds perfect for a tie-in with popular IP. We have a great culture of kids TV in this country ripe for exploitation. A "Big Cook Little Cook: Scone in 60 seconds" game would go gangbusters.
Hmm.
The Wombles - isometric resource management game
What's The Story: Balamory - murder mystery puzzle game
Plants Vs Zombies: Bill & Ben edition
Andy Pandy: Modern Warfare
Someone get Tony Hall on the phone, we're going to be rich!
Wonder if you could get away with making any game which uses a VR headset. Maybe several small games, and in thsoe games you could have a menu where you're on the VR deck from Red Dwarf. And when you die you take off the headset in the game, but you're still in the game.
You could even sell a groinial attachment to go with it.
Manage that level and you get to 'Self-Service Till!'
Can you complete the task without:
Calling an assistant without looking like a twat.
Get through the entire scanning level without goiing 'It's in the fucking bagging area!"
Find out where you're supposed to put the credit card.
...as I write, and nobody has pointed out Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a procedurally-generated first-person game of stealth and survival set in a very British world where robots hunt humans for sport. You must use your wits and possibly a flask of tea to stay alive.
Deerstalker FTW!
Guide a reactionary Middle Englander through a town centre full of imigrants on benefits, gay weddings, modern art, skateboarders, yoghurt bars, young people not looking where they are going while texting, young people playing loud music in Vauxhall Corsas, young people loitering in the park, young people wearing hoodies, young people pushing prams and so on, without their blood pressure rising to head-exploding levels. Collect beta-blockers and Franklin Mint china power-ups.
If making games about Slough will be subsidised, I propose a version of the old "Blitz" computer game:-
http://bestretrogames.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/blitz-commodore-vic-20-1981.html
It'll be called "Come, Friendly Bombs" and be lovingly ripped off from^w^w^w "inspired by" the John Betjeman poem. Of course, being Slough, there won't be many tall buildings, so it'll be quite easy to level.
One of the rules gives you four points for recording the game-dialogue mostly in English.
How about the original version of The Italian Job?
I recall a BBC series from the 70s called Gangsters.
You can get a good few points just from UK-based creation and production. And Lara Croft is a British character, so it isn't hard to add points there.
It needs a little care, but totting up 16 points doesn't look to need the obvious and slightly risible suggestions.
Could this get someone updating classics like these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Monty_Python_video_games
Or this?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_O%27_Magic#cite_note-1
This?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings_%28computer_game%29
Or this?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boggit
(Yes, I have odd tastes in video games.)
What's the bet some bastardised version of Candy Crush is going to submitted for approval - and pass?
Remember, Mcdonalds (the "food" place) passed Australia's Heart Foundation tick of approval a couple of years ago. No, their "food" hasn't magically gotten better, just everyone else's standards have gotten worse.
The tax relief is very much needed. It's hard to compete with Canada, Finland, China, German and many other countries let alone the USA for business. Independent games studios are developing some really innovative gaming experiences and narratives against an industry which has actually suffered a lot of companies going to the wall or being gobbled up by the larger publishers. THQ - gone along with some other great names. The rules to pass the test may be... European, but is anyone in the UK going to argue against this place being a leading and furtive ground for great games companies?
Pat fights to keep himself in a job, whilst simultaneously fighting to keep the Greendale PO open in the wake of savage govt cuts… and saving Ted from being put out to pasture by savage cuts to EU subsidies and Tesco price cuts.
A Red Dwarf adventure game would be good. Or how's about one of those promotion-type sims based at the Daily Mail…? You're awarded points for outrageous celeb paps, totally fabricated stories, all the while trying to keep from being sued. Or you're Clarkson, attempting to get away with offending as many types of people as possible, without landing the Beeb with - yet another (multi) million-quid lawsuit and, therefore keeping your job.
Brain isn't functioning today, so I'm not able to come up with much…
High concept:
Try to maintain your lavish lifestyle (and duck pond (and porn subscription)) using your expenses account, all while trying to avoid public scrutiny and nosy reporters in this virtual Houses of Parliament game.
Game style: Mixed. Some point and click adventure, some driving, some reaction games, some puzzles.
Details:
Use Ace Detective-style sequences in the Commons in order to sway the house into voting for measures that allow you to maintain the income that you so obviously deserve, all while keeping the details of your expenses from those pesky activists.
GTA-style sequences where you attempt to get from point A to point B whilst being pursued by paparazzi. You have a prostitute with her lips in your lap, and the idea is to get to point B whilst keeping your Public Outrage star-count low. If the photographers make it back with compromising pictures, your public outrage meter goes up. If you avoid the photographer or flatten them before they make it back, you get away with it.
You may start as a Lord, MP or Bishop. Each character class has some kind of failing that must be kept from the public at all costs. Either £800/roll wallpaper and a penchant for solid gold bog seats, a dope habit, or perhaps a relationship with one of the other class's preteen daughter depending on which class you choose.
MInigames include a steady-hand game where you have to try to evenly divide an 8-ball of coke into separate lines. Points rewarded for even distribution and number of lines tapped out. There's also a reaction game where you control a dominatrix spanking your character in time to music, DDR or Rock Band style.
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