Recently there have been a number of articles about Minister for the Arts Simon Crean’s support for an extension of the 40% producer offset to be applied to games, which represents the first time I can remember that game development has been discussed seriously and in public at a federal level.
His support isn’t coming out of thin air though. It’s a result of lobbying by various groups and discussions around and submissions to both the National Cultural Policy and the Convergence Review designed to:
“…set the framework for Australian Government support for arts, culture and creativity for the next ten years, providing us with a common strategic direction and rationale for current and future investment.”
From culture.arts.gov.au
All of the submissions eventually end up online here, so If you’re looking for some insight into what various organisations are thinking about for the future of game development and other artforms or creative industries, it’s fascinating reading. I’ve collated some of the games specific submissions below and and if anyone with more time on their hands than me wanted to do some analysis or commentary on them, I think that’d be quite interesting.
- 60Sox
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)
- Dr Jens Schroeder
- Freeplay
- GDAA
- Screen Australia
- SkillsHub
- Digital Culture Public Sphere Report – This is from Senator Kate Lundy’s Digital Culture Public Sphere initiative.
There are bound to be others that I’ve missed, so add them in the comments and I’ll update the list.