Scottish Politicians Playing Video Games with Tax

Unlike their English counterparts, who appear to want to see video games developers move to Canada, Scottish parliamentarians appear actually to be interested in the industry. A group of them spent Wednesday playing video games, praising Rockstar and Real Time Worlds, and generally coming to no conclusion on tax breaks.

The debate and day of gaming was organised by Joe FitzPatrick of the Scottish National Party. It was a "members' business debate on motion S3M-3311... on support for computer games development".

Our bolding... mainly due to our surprise.

Trish Godman of the labour party kicked off the short debate, name checking Realtime World's Colin McDonald, and stating that, "the Parliament notes with concern the comments of Colin Macdonald, Studio Manager for Dundee-based computer games developer Real Time Worlds, who recently expressed concern for the future of the industry; recognises that despite the current economic situation the computer games industry is continuing to grow, however that in terms of games development the United Kingdom is falling behind; notes that UK firms must pay tax on research and development, while in countries such as Canada and France rebates are given; further notes the importance to the economy of Dundee and Scotland of computer games developers who have produced award-winning titles such as Crackdown, which recently sold over 1.5 million units, and believes that games development in Scotland will suffer under the current tax regime."

Godman was followed into the fray by Fitzpatrick himself, who pointed out, "We are seeing the first signs that problems might lie ahead for the computer games industry.

"The UK is falling behind on games development, and the countries that are overtaking us are those that have given tax breaks for games development.

"If our computer games industry is to compete on an equal footing with companies in other countries, it needs support during the development process, which can be lengthy."

Lib Dem, Iain Smith (who doesn't play GTA... because, apparently, Lib Dems don't) pointed out, "Computer gaming is not just about young people sitting around playing games and wasting their time. As Gavin Brown said, the industry is at the cutting edge of computer software development and is highly mathematics and physics based."

SNP man, Nigel Don piled in with some figures that we feel should be plastered all over the House of Commons in London, "Each year, the film industry contributes £1 billion to the UK's gross domestic product—roughly the same as the games industry. However, unlike the games industry, the film industry receives £100 million in tax breaks every year.

"If we can see the links between tax breaks and a growing market for films, why cannot we see them for computer games?"

Sadly, the Greens Robin Harper was not quite so on the ball, "This has been an interesting debate, in which I have learned quite a lot. The last time that I played a computer game was in the Traverse Theatre bar in 1975, when I had to blast little blobs off a black-and-white screen — I think that the game was called Space Invaders"; excellent trick from the Green-man... seeing as Taito and Toshihiro Nishikado didn't bring the game out until 1978.

Unfortunately, the debate was rounded off by the governing SNP's Michael Russell, who - in the face of his colleagues demanding breaks for the industry - prevaricated with "We will bring together key figures from the industry to identify what needs to be done whenever we need to. We will help to support the sector, but we will also be realistic. We will do what we can, but we could do more with the powers to do more."

You can read the whole debate here.