LATEST NEWS
Insight Article (June 2010) Freeing the iPhone: Rick Gibson assesses the future of iPhone games and contrasts his bleak findings about premium retail games with the brighter prospects for freemium products like ngmoco's We Rule.
Doctor Who shifts 500,000 downloads in 12 days (June 2010): In another first for the BBC, the first episode of Doctor Who the Adventure Games won a half million downloads in just 12 days. Executives at BBC are delighted and GIC is quietly pleased our strategy is working. Read more about it in Gamasutra, MCV, Gamesindustry.biz and Broadcast.
Insight Article (May 2010) The Generation Game: Another year, another batch of Cassandras calling the current generation of consoles the last ever. Nick Gibson picks up and passes this old canard around, before putting it into touch.
GIC Doctor Who project announced (April 10): Doctor Who: the Adventure Games generates huge media interest. Since mid-2008, GIC has been working with Simon Nelson, Controller of Vision Multiplatform and Portfolio, the Cardiff interactive team, Sumo and Charles Cecil to define and give strategic guidance to this innovative project. Broadcast gives just a taste of the coverage (more below). Read a case study on what we did on the project here.
Insight Article: (April 10): Do we still need publishers in an online world? As the games industry inexorably moves online, we examine the myth of 'going direct' and assess the new skills games companies need to get their products to market.
Historic decision by the Chancellor (Mar 10): Games Tax relief announced by British government. After 5 years of GIC working with TIGA and leading British games companies to persuade policy-makers that the UK studio sector needs a tax credit to sustain growth, the Chancellor relented and announced a tax credit for cultural games to be instituted in 2011. Building on the Games Up? campaign in 2008 and GIC's report Investing in the Future for TIGA in 2009, we provided critical data to Ian Livingstone and TIGA, who persuaded Stephen Timms to drive the measure into Labour's last Budget. Read more here.
Insight article (Mar 10): Games will subsume everything. Our latest article for Develop proposes that games are fast becoming the most important entertainment medium of the 21st century.
Latest conference speech (Mar 10): GIC's Rick Gibson spoke at Games Gone Wild 2 about the tipping point when network games will overtake retail and why traditional publishers have been slow to take leadership positions in new online markets.
Latest report (Feb 10): Big Media Investment in Games. Our latest report looks at how, where and why traditional media companies have invested $3bn in games over the last 5 years. You can purchase the report from Screen Digest.
Insight article (Feb 10): An offer you can't refuse. Rick Gibson examines the furore around criminal scams and the firms taken in by them, and finds a perfectly viable commercial model for social gaming.
Insight article (Dec 09): Taking a gamble? Our latest article for Develop shines a light on the investment by a huge gambling company in an online games publisher.
Insight article (Nov 09): Extraordinary games business: Ankama. GIC's latest article for Develop profiles one of Europe's most formidable casual MMOG companies, Ankama.
Insight article (Oct 09): What the industry said: the definitive survey on tax credits. A review of our findings in the latest industry survey on tax breaks (from our monthly column in Develop).
New report (Aug 09): Time to play. GIC analyses the impact of a tax credit for cultural games on the UK games development industry. You can read the synopsis here or the entire report for free here.
GIC IN THE NEWS
GIC interviewed by T3's TechDesign TV: Rick Gibson discussed the impact of social network gaming on the wider industry here.
GIC discusses investing in games in EDGE: Article on how investors treat the games industry extensively features Nick Gibson's thoughts here.
GIC's stealth project Doctor Who covered in the press: You can read more about this pioneering BBC games initiative in the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Sun, Broadcast, PC Gamer, BBC, Gamesindustry.biz, MCV, and Develop.
GIC asks why there is no Twilight game: Nick Gibson discusses the value of an unexploited traditional media IP brand here.
GIC's latest report covered in the press: You can read about our latest report on Big Media's Investment in Games in Gamasutra, in Gamesindustry.biz and in MCV.
GIC on the iPad: The Guardian's Jack Schofield quizzed Nick Gibson on the launch of Apple's latest style icon. Read Nick's comments here
Investing in the Future: Our report Investing in the Future for TIGA set out the case and mechanism for administering cultural tax credits and strongly argued that games can be cultural products. Read Develop's coverage.
Time to play gets national media coverage: Our recent report Time to play was covered in the Independent, the Times and the Guardian.
Other News
Westminster Media Forum speech (Jan 10): GIC's Rick Gibson spoke at the Westminster Media Forum, setting the scene for the conference on Government policy and games. Read Rick's transcript here.
Games Gone Wild 1 conference presentation: Rick presented latest market stats and chaired a panel discussion at a Kemp Little conference of online games businesses for investors called Games Gone Wild. Read more
GameHorizon conference presentation: Rick also presented the latest games commercial models and chaired a panel of industry experts for the GameHorizon conference in Newcastle in July. Read more
