UKIE’s vision relevant to them by making the benefits of membership clear. I naffly thought the other day that we need to put the You back into UKIE. We can do this by helping developers to understand and have access to the latest platforms, experts, decision makers and technology they see as vital to their vision, as well as providing them with advice on issues such as raising money, finding new business models, building relationships with their fans, getting the most out of their creative IP and finding talent.
What have been your first impressions of UKIE? Looking from the outside in, as someone who was closely involved with the industry, UKIE’s positioning as representing the whole interactive entertainment industry and their engagement with the big debates really made them stand out as the trade body that most external audiences wanted to work with. Watching the success of UKIE’s Next Gen Skills campaign in particular, proved to me what a driven and forward looking organisation UKIE is. It not only played a major role in having the recommendations from the Livingstone-Hope skills review accepted by the Department for Education, but showed that UKIE and the industry could step up and make things happen on the bigger stage. There remains much for UKIE and Next Gen Skills to achieve before we have a fully-fledged computer science curriculum being taught but we are committed to getting it over the finishing line and ensuring that the games industry has the skilled workforce that it requires. UKIE’s next priority for its Skills workstream is to focus on getting new talent into the games business by educating kids, teachers and parents about the possibilities that are in the games industry. And of course I have inherited an absolutely fantastic, enthusiastic and truly committed team. I already feel like I have been there for months.
What are your immediate plans for UKIE?
First, I want to change the tone of UKIE. I don’t want us to be a grey and purple faceless place. We are
20 January 27th 2012
JOIN TODAY For more information on joining UKIE go to www.ukie.info
Education secretary Michael Gove has announced that ICT in UK schools will be replaced by a curriculum that includes computer science and programming.
passionate humans who care and only wants the best for the industry. That’s our shared priority. I am putting posters up all over the place so that people know who we speak up for as soon as they walk through the door. We speak your language.
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Alexa Turness in place as our events manager and will soon have our new research manager in place, too. I want these events to feel friendlier and ‘mustn’t miss’.
The need for a digital chart has gone beyond
mission critical and has to be a priority. Jo Twist, UKIE
The team at UKIE is already working at a high level and they already have plans in place to further improve what UKIE offers. This includes many more events and more research – we already have
UKIE NEWS
PIRACY Two major games pirates Richard Howell (39) and Scott Cooke (36) have been jailed for selling R4 copier cards and supplying illegally copied DS games. Trading standards worked with UKIE on the cases.
SOPA
UKIE will host an industry-wide debate following the debate around the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The debate will ‘explore ways of positively building on the power of our products and services for game makers and players.’
NEXT-GEN SKILLS
The current programme of ICT in UK schools will be scrapped by September, education secretary Michael Gove has announced. ICT is to be replaced by a mixed ‘open source’ curriculum of computer science and programming.
Having a strong team already in place leaves me free to spend time with members and non members, to listen, to digest and come out with a solid plan of exactly what the industry needs and I’ll be doing a lot of listening over my first couple of months or so before finalising my overall plans for UKIE. However, one of the big projects that I will be focusing on is the delivery of the UKIE Digital Charts. This industry has always been digital and has been better equipped than other industries to turn the advances in digital technology into opportunities rather than threats. But to understand the direction that we should be travelling in, we must be able to measure the size of the market, to benchmark and to understand what success looks like
across all formats and platforms. This has now gone beyond mission critical and has to be a priority for the industry. UKIE is ready to create the first digital chart – we have a beta running with the data that we have – but we still need more input from industry. We need your data! Without this data we cannot lobby government effectively, we cannot even start to judge the true scale of digital piracy and our members will not be able to make informed and fact based commercial decisions. We now have enough data to launch our PC Digital Chart early this year with XBLA and PSN to follow. But to make this work we need all interactive entertainment businesses to provide us with the data that’s required to measure the size of our industry.
Now is the time to join in. If you’re interested in being part of UKIE’s Digital Charts please drop our commercial manager Sam Collins a line – sam.collins@ukie.org.uk.