infexxionAustralian Games Industry Feels Threatened, Wants Cash
The Australian games industry is a little concerned. See, the bulk of local studios are outsource jobs; in fact, most of the biggest studios in the country are outposts for developers like Creative Assembly, Pandemic and Irrational. Which means most are on "work for hire" contracts, which will soon be lost as work starts going to places like China and India.
Wanting to, you know...keep their jobs, local devs have gone cap-in-hand to the government to ask for federal funding, without which they argue they just won't have the money to make original games and IP (which would be the only way to avoid "work for hire" contracts). After all, the film and television industries get the same breaks, so you'd think games should be able to get in on that action.
Not if the Screen Producers Association (who would lose some of their government funding should games get some cash) can help it. They argue that they receive government funding because their mediums "have social and cultural value". And games don't:
The extent to which we can say games fall into that category, we think is problematic to say the least
Good to see them approaching this with an open mind rather than a guarded checkbook. This one? Gonna get messy.
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