Boss, any idea where BAFTA is?
The UK games industry continues to attempt to establish a recognised and recurring series of trade and consumer events, with details just announced on this year’s London Games Week.
ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) and TIGA (The Independent Games Developers Association) have jointly announced the creation of the London Games Festival, billed as “...a week long cultural and business celebration of computer and video games.”
London Games Week is created in partnership with the London Development Association (LDA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and will combine ‘key events’ throughout the Capital from Monday, October 2, 2006. ELSPA and TIGA are organising two business events: the London Games Summit will take place on October 4/5; whilst the Content Market will run for two days on October 3/4.
Roger Bennett, director general of ELSPA, said: "The alliance between ELSPA, TIGA, the LDA and BAFTA provides the games industry with a perfect opportunity to build substantial trade and consumer activity that will firmly establish games as the entertainment phenomenon of the 21st century."
SPOnG, sniffing some quite whiffy PRBS, says "Enough with the acroynmns already!"
Perhaps the biggest news is that the industry continues to cement its relationship with BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) in the somewhat vain hope of elevating The British Academy Video Games Awards to become equal with BAFTA’s well-recognised and heavily publicised awards to the UK’s TV and film industries.
Whilst this is in some ways laudable, in basic terms of seeking a wider public recognition of the UK games industry’s achievements, SPOnG can’t help but feel there are one or two basic flaws to the plan.
Firstly, if games were going to be recognised by BAFTA on a par with film and TV, surely BAFTA would have to change its name, to BAFTGA. Or something daft like that.
Secondly, games awards just cannot expect to garner anywhere near the extensive television and tabloid coverage given to BAFTA’s TV and film awards ceremonies. Simply put, we don’t have enough good-looking celebrities to capture and hold the average Sun reader’s attention.
The London Games Summit will take place at BAFTA. The Content Market will take place at the Café Royal.
All cynicism about ugly developers aside, lets hope that ELSPA and TIGA can really manage to pull together the industry to finally produce some events which do have business and cultural value for the UK games industry. This is long overdue.
UPDATE: Future Publishing has also just announced today that this year’s Golden Joystick Awards will be televised on ITV4 as part of a special themed evening of games programming. The 24th annual games awards event is set to return to the Park Lane Hilton on October 27th. Yes, the 24th! It really has been going that long.
Future's Head of Press Release Re-writing, James Ashton-Tyler said: "We are delighted that by screening the awards on ITV4, we’ll be able to bring them to an even wider audience."
ITV4, for those who have never seen it, is what is known as a minority interest channel.
ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) and TIGA (The Independent Games Developers Association) have jointly announced the creation of the London Games Festival, billed as “...a week long cultural and business celebration of computer and video games.”
London Games Week is created in partnership with the London Development Association (LDA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and will combine ‘key events’ throughout the Capital from Monday, October 2, 2006. ELSPA and TIGA are organising two business events: the London Games Summit will take place on October 4/5; whilst the Content Market will run for two days on October 3/4.
Roger Bennett, director general of ELSPA, said: "The alliance between ELSPA, TIGA, the LDA and BAFTA provides the games industry with a perfect opportunity to build substantial trade and consumer activity that will firmly establish games as the entertainment phenomenon of the 21st century."
SPOnG, sniffing some quite whiffy PRBS, says "Enough with the acroynmns already!"
Perhaps the biggest news is that the industry continues to cement its relationship with BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) in the somewhat vain hope of elevating The British Academy Video Games Awards to become equal with BAFTA’s well-recognised and heavily publicised awards to the UK’s TV and film industries.
Whilst this is in some ways laudable, in basic terms of seeking a wider public recognition of the UK games industry’s achievements, SPOnG can’t help but feel there are one or two basic flaws to the plan.
Firstly, if games were going to be recognised by BAFTA on a par with film and TV, surely BAFTA would have to change its name, to BAFTGA. Or something daft like that.
Secondly, games awards just cannot expect to garner anywhere near the extensive television and tabloid coverage given to BAFTA’s TV and film awards ceremonies. Simply put, we don’t have enough good-looking celebrities to capture and hold the average Sun reader’s attention.
The London Games Summit will take place at BAFTA. The Content Market will take place at the Café Royal.
All cynicism about ugly developers aside, lets hope that ELSPA and TIGA can really manage to pull together the industry to finally produce some events which do have business and cultural value for the UK games industry. This is long overdue.
UPDATE: Future Publishing has also just announced today that this year’s Golden Joystick Awards will be televised on ITV4 as part of a special themed evening of games programming. The 24th annual games awards event is set to return to the Park Lane Hilton on October 27th. Yes, the 24th! It really has been going that long.
Future's Head of Press Release Re-writing, James Ashton-Tyler said: "We are delighted that by screening the awards on ITV4, we’ll be able to bring them to an even wider audience."
ITV4, for those who have never seen it, is what is known as a minority interest channel.
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