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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Analysis and Opinion   >   Opinion   >   Time to end the dangerous split between ELSPA and Tiga?

Time to end the dangerous split between ELSPA and Tiga?

By on May 18, 2009

Frontier has just announced that it has joined ELSPA.

The developer, famous for Dog’s Life and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and led by David Braben, says that “ ELSPA addresses what we as game creators feel are the key strategic issues now facing us, including piracy, ratings and the pre-owned situation.”

One of my key themes is that all developers are becoming publishers. With the emergence of the Internet, the lines between developers (who create games) and publishers (who finance, sell, market and distribute games) is rapidly blurring. Add in public policy issues like age-ratings and the Byron report which will affect any developer trying to sell direct-to-consumer (for example, if they run flash games or are considering a casual MMO) and you can understand why Frontier has joined up.

(I’m trying to find out if Frontier is now a member of both the publisher’s association ELSPA and the developer’s association TIGA.)

The historic split between ELSPA and TIGA is looking ever more anachronistic, even though both organisations do worthy and valuable work.

Is it time for British developers and publishers to put aside their differences and merge their trade bodies into one?

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com