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.
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