Furthermore, am I the only one who thinks the rest is nothing but payola? “Up to 4 points may be awarded in respect of the contribution of the video game to the promotion […] of British culture.”
How is this not payola?

Sure. It's payola. Like taking a salary is payola.

What it is is the officially recognized administration representing the culture of the British attempting to preserve and promote that culture in a very very culturally-influential market sector. It's not about the industry, the dollars, the accountants. It's about the culture and the people who live it.

I'm not British, but I recognize the attempt to preserve and promote native culture in the face of an overwhelming and market-dominating foreign hegemony. It turns out that not everyone in the world is American or Japanese, and some of them would prefer to stay that way.

The government of my country does such a thing in the music and motion picture industries and to a lesser extent formerly in the written word industries. Yeah, there are a lot of complaints from lawyers and accountants and free-market pundits because evidently someone might not make as big a profit margin if they can't just import cheap foreign wal-mart culture exclusively, but after a few decades we now have have access to local cultural memes in our own homes. The sky didn't fall, the world didn't end, and some people got rich anyway.

I'm ashamed my own government is not doing something similar, considering we have a substantial games-production industry.

edit: To be clear, on the above I have more of a problem with them trying to define what their culture is/should be (eg: 4 points if the video game depicts a British story or a story which relates to an EEA state) rather than them promoting their culture in whichever direction it should naturally go (eg: you are british and making art, have some tax incentives).

Fair enough, I guess.

But they *are* doing the latter (a British team working in Britain qualifies). The fact that they also provide a way for a foreign team operating in Britain to qualify based on cultural elements, is purely a bonus...

Like taking a salary is payola.

Bad example. My money comes from 3 sources: Making video games, acting on TV/movies, and writing books.
I would be doing the same thing whether I was getting paid for it or not. In fact I sometimes don’t receive money after an acting job and I don’t really care—I wanted to do the job; the money is just a bonus. I asked the publisher for permission to write the book because I wanted to write a book.
Money isn’t steering me or in any way putting me into a position in which I must go against my beliefs. Everything I do I do because it is what I want to do and I believe in it. This is not payola. Besides, payola by definition relates specifically to the promotion of something.

What it is is the officially recognized administration representing the culture of the British attempting to preserve and promote that culture in a very very culturally-influential market sector. It's not about the industry, the dollars, the accountants. It's about the culture and the people who live it.

People seem to have very mixed opinions as to why they are doing it/what they are attempting to do.

It turns out that not everyone in the world is American or Japanese

Is this a personal attack on myself for being an American who lives in Japan, or is there an actual reason you randomly chose these 2 countries?
Because whether or not America is pushing its culture is debatable at best, but there is no possible way to claim that Japan, the most isolated and least out-going country in the world, is doing so. Japan especially lives inside its own little bubble. How many Japanese have you ever seen in your life posting on non Japanese forums etc.?

In both cases, neither country is pushing their culture on anyone else. America makes media for itself. Movies/music go outside of America only due to high demand.
Japanese make anime for themselves. They get released outside of Japan because people outside of Japan want to have them. Only America’s “war on terror” makes their cultural push debatable, but that is a separate issue—we are talking about media here.

It’s easy to mistake the worldwide distribution of one nation’s media (which includes video games) for being that country’s cultural push onto other countries, but that isn’t really what is happening.

I'm ashamed my own government is not doing something similar, considering we have a substantial games-production industry.

If you already have a substantial development industry then it is unlikely for your government to promote the growth of said industry—it’s already there.
The goal of this kind of promotion should be to decrease unemployment and increase government revenue from the games sector. Canada doesn’t need this kind of promotion—in fact due to the number of studios there the best thing the government can do (in pursuit of revenue) is to keep the taxes where they are.
If you are talking more specifically about incentives to promote Canada’s culture through video games, that’s only plausible under the veil of the above.


L. Spiro

Regarding the cultural test in terms of the gameplay - I don't think it's the Government sticking its nose in, anymore than tax is anyway. Yes, there is the problem that "tax breaks for some" is effectively equivalent to "higher tax for others", but I don't think it's inherently a problem.

It would be a problem if the higher tax level became crippling so that developers were effectively forced into making games according to these requirements. But I don't think there's inherently a problem in offering different levels of tax - Governments do this in all kinds of areas, in order to promote things they think are important (e.g., VAT - see the whole biscuit-vs-cake debate).

This is also probably a better way of promoting national culture, than trying to set up a new British-focused tax-funded games company (this works for TV - the BBC - but I can't see it working well for computer games...) But I do agree that there is the risk of doing it by this kind of "points checklist" could lead to absurdities in games...

However, I really dislike the idea of discrimination based on the employees. Immigration is already something that's incredibly strict, and being made stricter for outside the EU. For anyone other than married couples (and even there it's hard these days), it's pretty much impossible for most people, unless the company can show that they can't fill the position with someone in the UK. But it seems distasteful that even if someone does have the legal right to work here, they will find themselves turned down, if some companies are only recruiting British people for the tax breaks.

I might also wonder if this is some way to deter EU immigration too (the EU now has freedom of movement for work, but the new rules specify British people). But it doesn't say what a "qualifying person" actually is?

Another good write up which shows that, even in its current form which is likely to change, it seems to be a positive thing although not without issues; http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/13/how-the-new-uk-tax-laws-will-affect-indie-developers/