14 MCV 10/09/10
MCV INTERVIEW MICHAEL RAWLINSON, UKIE
All change
New name, new logo, new website, new team, new energy. ELSPA completed its rebrand to UKIE this week – and already things feel different. Michael French caught up with organisation chief Michael Rawlinson to find out what exactly the association for UK Interactive Entertainment has planned for the games industry…
OUTSIDE 167 Wardour Street, West London you used to find a small plaque by the doorbell, inscribed with five letters: ELSPA.
Although that acronym literally meant the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, the name stood for many things including anti-piracy, sales charts, age-ratings, and interfacing with Government. But the plaque, on the wall outside
ELSPA’s London HQ, is gone now. Earlier this week the brass engraving was scratched off and replaced with something else: UKIE.
The association for UK Interactive Entertainment still stands for things like anti-piracy, sales charts, age-ratings, and interfacing with Government. But as a renewed and revitalised new name in the games industry, its remit is wider, focused on all the issues that matter to all of the trade, not just publishers. Why is it changing? Why is ELSPA not a relevant name anymore? “The clue is in the name – we were an association for publishers of entertainment and interactive leisure software. But the market is no longer fitting into the demarcation of publisher, developer, retailer or distributor – we are no longer in silos, but a more homogeneous market,” explains director general Michael Rawlinson when MCV visits the Wardour Street offices to find out more about the rebrand. “We are called upon more often than not to speak for the industry – but we can’t do that because our membership does not completely represent the games industry. We think it is important to represent everyone – the industry of companies that are in the business of making and exploiting interactive entertainment products.”
A UNITED KINGDOM
Rawlinson says that UKIE will be ‘sharper, quicker and more decisive’ in its dealings with everyone, from the
WWW.MCVUK.COM
Rawlinson says that by growing its membership UKIE can strengthen its relations with Whitehall
press and politicians right through to its member relations. Most importantly, it wants to grow that base of members to include everyone in games, regardless of where they sit on the spectrum.
In the plainest terms, that means developers are now eligible to become full members (service
companies, educators, and
the like can become associate members). The change comes in part because the
“
traditional base of publishers is shrinking (“All our members keep buying each other,” jokes Rawlinson), and because
the games industry is concurrently widening to more platforms and avenues than ever. Plus, ELSPA didn’t mean anti-piracy and age-ratings to
The games industry is no longer about just a single physical point of contact. It has a much bigger remit.
Michael Rawlinson
some – it was wrongly written off as a publishers-only old boys’ club, something Rawlinson is keen to dispel. “The games industry is no longer about just a single physical point of
contact – not just consoles or PCs, it’s MMOs, browser and mobile as well now. It’s a much bigger remit that we want to cover. That’s why we’re doing it. This is no longer and exclusive old boys’ club – it is welcoming and requires participation and ownership from within to make it what our members want it to be, so we want them to come and join us.”
Tuesday, with a Westminster unveiling of the new UKIE logo and the organisation’s ambitions – but in the months prior ELSPA has been
” The first public move came this past
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