The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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1:36pm on Thursday, 8th July, 2010:
Anecdote
I'm back at the hotel after a morning of being on a panel and then being interviewed (3 TV stations and a radio station — the latter took so long that the newspaper people went home rather than hang around). I would have liked to have stayed a while longer and looked at the exhibits more, but I'd told my driver (yes, I have a driver) to pick me up at 2pm so didn't want to tell him to go home and come back later (I guess I'm not cut out for having a driver or I would have done).
Germany has some quite big (400 employees) developers of online games, but not as many smaller developers as it should have. Say what you like about the UK's drive to use training as a substitute for education in computer games, it does mean we have a many more young people eager and able to make online games than does Germany. However, Germany has an unusual advantage in that it never fully developed a regular computer games industry because such games are regarded here as being anti-social; as online games are by definition social, this means that all the companies that were previously being stymied by negative public attitudes can now pile into the space and be seen in a positive light. A past weakness has thus become a strength.
The UK games industry currently has a weakness in that the government doesn't subsidise game development. I wonder if that will eventually turn into a strength?
HA — like that's ever going to happen!
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Copyright © 2010 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).