Last week I attended my first Develop in Brighton Conference. In fact it was the first time that I have visited Brighton, but as a seasider born and bred (first Southport, then Blackpool), the salty air and squawking seagulls against my hotel window each morning were pleasantly familiar.
I did attend Develop’s inaugural event in Liverpool last year and made the mistake of sitting in one of the coding sessions. For those unfamiliar with Develop’s format, the sessions are categorised into different ‘tracks’; Art, Audio, Business, Coding, Design, Evolve (focusing on emerging platforms and digital marketplaces), Production and The Den (the ‘creative fringe’ of game development). My particular ‘track’ during Develop in Brighton was roughly a 50:50 split between Business and Production, with an Art session thrown-in for good measure (I mean, who wouldn’t want to indulge in a Pixar keynote?) but generally speaking, coding is not exactly my forte.
The opening keynotes of each day of the conference included Louis Castle (Instant Action Inc), which I sadly did not attend, Dr Greg Zeschuk (BioWare) who presented how BioWare created and maintain their studio culture, and Tim Schafer (Double Fine) whose enigmatical talk focused on how his studio made the transition from a single team working on a single game to being split into four to concentrate on smaller titles. David Helgason (Unity Technologies) also gave a closing keynote on the first day of the conference on the topic of ‘gamification’ before Unity Technologies went on to win both the Technical Innovation award and Grand Prix award at the Develop Awards 2010. However they were unable to take the award for Engine which went to Unreal Engine 3. Rumblings in the Twitter backchannel made it clear that the audience expected fireworks between Unity and Unreal as Mark Rein moved to the front row of the auditorium as David Helgason took to the stage to deliver his keynote. However Mark remained quiet, unlike during the 'Rise of the Micro Studio Panel' at the end of the second day in which Mark (again from the front row) made his disagreement vocal on the subject of community relations during a PR campaign. If you follow the games press, you will have seen a lot of attention already paid to this so I do not wish to give it any more attention here, particularly as I happen to agree with Mark’s comments at the panel discussion.
Culture secretary, Ed Vaizey gave his first public address to the games industry during the morning of the second day of the conference in which he explained that he backed George Osborne’s decision to remove the proposed tax credit support of the games industry, yet remains a “committed champion” of the industry. This was followed later in the day by an interesting panel discussion between Hasan Bakhshi (NESTA), Richard Wilson (TIGA), Dylan Jones (Ingenious Media) and Vincent Shearer (ex-Europress), and chaired by Tim Gatland (Fund4Games) asking the question ‘What does the industry need if production tax credits can not be delivered?’. Some of the avenues explored during the discussion included R&D tax credits, the Enterprise Investment Scheme, further investment into HEIs, more flexibility around the use of grants for overseas travel and accommodation, corporate tax incentives for private investment into game companies, a re-address of employment law, and a continued push for tax credits, particularly as a means to secure inward investment.
Continues with Part II
