Aliens vs Predator and The UK Games Biz

The UK Games Industry and The Future

BT: Do you think these problems arise from the immaturity of the medium compared to, say, books?

Jason: I think there’s a part of that. Games grew up in a younger environment, but we all still play games and we’re grown ups. There’s a legacy of that.

Also though, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen footage of Elvis doing his pelvic wobble? It outraged America and yet we look at it now and can’t even see why it might be controversial, but it was properly shocking at the time and Elvis got death threats about it. It’s the way these things go.

Then there’s the politicians and the way they use tabloid headlines to get re-elected too, which is especially relevant with a general election coming up. All the politicians in the UK are positioning themselves to get the most votes and make us forget about the expenses claims. Then there’s lazy journalism too. You’ve probably seen it, where journalists use stupid titles like ‘PlayStation 3 kill my dog’.


BT: Gaming causes rickets?

Jason: Exactly. Yet, we know that there’s vitamin D impregnated in the plastic so you can’t get rickets from gaming! Ha. That was all so silly, the gaming causes rickets stuff. It’s vitamin D deficiency that cause rickets.

Gaming is an easy target, that’s what it comes down to really. They don’t do it with rock and roll music anymore, if you notice. Because everyone listens to it and nobody gets corrupted.

BT: Or comics.

Jason: Yeah, which created the comics code of America. It was the same with movies once and we had all these weird rules about actors having to keep one foot on the ground during sex scenes and so on. That led for some ridiculous rumpy-pumpy.

It’s just a phase we’re going through as a society and, because games are getting better, these things are popping up. We should be celebrating it in the UK though, because we’re really bloody good at making games. We really, really are. We punch way above our weight on the world circuit in terms of quality titles and it’s long overdue that we celebrate the creative forces behind them. We’ve made some of the best games in the world and hopefully AVP can be a number one hit too. Imagine if Avatar was a film made in the UK and how fabulous everyone would say that was for the nation.

BT: Do you have an opinion on TIGA’s recent push for a tax break for UK developers then?


Jason: Well, I should do since I’m the chairman and founder of TIGA, shouldn’t I? Ha!

Basically, what we’ve got at the moment is a very uneven playing field. I personally suggested that we should make it so that no industry got tax breaks anywhere, because I prefer that kind of less-interventionist government. At the same time though, when you’ve got Canada offering 40 per cent tax breaks and places in North America offering more than that to try and get part of this knowledge-based industry which is incredibly valuable to the economy, then the issue is whether that’s going to cause a brain drain?

It could be a problem for the UK, especially since we don’t have any substantial publishers. I can’t knock on the door of three big UK publishers and say ‘Hi! Do you want to work with your local developers?’ because we’ve only got Codemasters left and they aren’t in a strong position, apparently.

So, we go to America, Japan, China, France for publishers because we haven’t got anywhere else to go. We’ve got some great developers and just here we have some fabulously talented members of staff. Skills; well, there’s a bit of an issue regarding skills and training for people coming through the graduate programs, but we’ve got a real competitive environment now… Well, the government is looking at it anyway. They seem to be taking us seriously as an industry.

BT: Do you ever see Rebellion moving overseas?

Jason: Currently? No. I wouldn’t rule it out though. It would depend entirely on what opportunities were there.

And that’s a wrap! Rebellion’s Aliens versus Predator will be out on February 19th in the UK for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. You can check our AVP preview for more info and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the forums.