What with the new government budget announced last week, the BBC visited us to ask what we thought on the lack of tax breaks for the UK games industry. Understandably, we’re not particularly happy with the current government’s lack of support for the industry, especially when other countries support gaming quite vigorously. Anyway, the full clip is shown below.

Commemorating TIGA’s 10th Anniversary, James (our studio head) was interviewed over at GamesIndustry.biz, along with Patrick O’Luanaigh from nDreams, about TIGA’s role in the UK games industry and how it has helped small start-ups across the UK. If you’re at all curious about TIGA, then have a quick gander of the video below.

Our studio head, James Brooksby, was recently interviewed over at wootfly.tv. This is a cool new site that focuses on emphasising giving the creative side of games creation (as in the developers) a chance to speak out, or in the words of the site’s founder Joel Benton “the people that make games are as interesting and engaging as the people that make TV, films and music – they’re just not as well known. Wootfly.tv is trying to change that, one casual chat at a time”. The videos also use a fair bit of nifty tagging too whenever certain subjects are discussed. In any case, James’ interview is linked below.

As has been announced elsewhere, we are now working on a new Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game. As well as the core game that everyone is familiar with, this new edition will go beyond that and also support DLC for various game “packs”. These packs will also be linked to famous entertainment franchises, which we unfortunately aren’t allowed to talk much about at the moment (though feel free to take some guesses).

For those that have been following us recently, this is the first of the three games we currently have in development. The other two are entirely separate IP’s we’ve created ourselves though, in case you were wondering about that.

As part of BBC Four’s ongoing Electric Dreams season, a recent drama about the 80′s computer boom in the UK was aired a few days ago. Called Micro Men it featured the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. Considering that the vast majority of the people making video games today in the UK is a result of the fact that both these men enabled children to get access to personal computers, the legacy of hardware like the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro is almost palpable.

If you missed the drama first time around, then you can still watch it on iPlayer (if you live in the UK).

The indomitable Charlie Brooker did a one off gaming special last night in the same vein as his acerbic Screenwipe series. Naturally, it was similarly insightful and adroit as well as being refreshing to see gaming covered without it being painfully ignorant and/or hysterical. The show had some decent guests espousing their take on games too, including the chirpy chaps from Consolevania. You can watch it here (if you live in the UK).

James was recently interviewed on GI.biz over the sales boost Burn Zombie Burn received off the recent PlayStation 3 firmware update (3.00). As it now features a “What’s New” section on startup, allowing people to see straight away what’s happening on the PSN storefront without having to load it up directly. In addition, the increase in PlayStation 3 Slim sales has obviously accentuated this new feature. In any case, it makes digitally distributed games more visible and this makes us happy.

With the success of Burn Zombie Burn, James spoke with GI.biz about how platform holders should allow greater transparency on sales figures for digitally distributed titles. As this would allow developers and publishers to make realistic plans in relation to actual sales data, something they’re already able to do with boxed games as the necessary data is widely available. Considering the skyrocketing prices of boxed games, the sooner digitally distributed titles get more accessible sales data the better it will be for the industry and the medium as a whole.

James Brooksby, our studio head, spoke recently with Develop about the whole Pub Fund setup. Burn Zombie Burn is the first game under this great initiative, that allows developers to receive backing from Sony. James goes into quite a bit of detail in the interview but it’s worth clarifying that Sony don’t necessarily “match your investment”. That’s a possible misquote or misunderstanding in the interview. The interview was also picked up on Joystiq, which is nice.

On the latest edition of the Electric Playground, Jim was interviewed about Burn Zombie Burn. Unfortunately, they thought that Pinnacle developed the game. In any case, in order to view the segment below click on the second part to the right of the main video pane. Enjoy!