By RICHARD WOOD
A growing new industry that combines two of the Labour Government's favoured industry sectors - ICT (information and communications technologies) and creative - is having trouble getting the funds it needs for growth.
An Industry NZ report shows the industry is growing at 43 per cent a year globally and says New Zealand needs to seize the opportunity.
Clare O'Leary, author of the Game on NZ report, said a strategic approach was needed to develop skills in 3D immersive graphics and to introduce such training into schools.
Mario Wynands, the managing director of Sidhe Interactive, maker of games for PCs and consoles, said the local games development industry had doubled for the past two years.
He estimates the local industry, which employs about 35 people, turns over about $3.5 million a year and will reach $8 million for the next financial year.
But his estimate does not include Auckland-based Right Hemisphere, which makes tools for 3D graphics, including a product shipped with Microsoft's Xbox console development environment and another shipped with the popular SIM game through Electronic Arts.
Eight more firms have joined Sidhe and Right Hemisphere to form the NZ Game Developers Association (www.nzgda.com). Sidhe, which has made Barbie games for Mattel and a soccer game for adidas, has 21 staff working on three projects.
Wynands said there was a lot of raw talent in New Zealand, but hiring new staff was a problem. "There is a pretty big gap between what most people have and what we'd really like them to have."
He said he received an email every day from someone keen to "sell their soul" to get a job in the industry. Most applicants were not suitable.
O'Leary's report said there was no funding model available through the creative industries or from science and technology budgets. The film industry was seen as a source of design and storytelling skills, she said, but a whole new industry needed to be developed.
The report said the ideal model for a games developer was to retain ownership of the intellectual property of a title and/or character. That had become particularly important as movies were now spinning off games titles.
Ex-Weta Digital chief technical officer Jon Labrie is a partner in Blister, a firm which is targeting the burgeoning mobile phone game market.
Labrie said the phone game market was a lower-risk entry into the industry.
Funding a new "A-list" console game from scratch would cost around US$5 million ($10 million) and most did not make it to production.
Labrie said Industry NZ was making the right noises but there was little infrastructure.
* The Game On NZ report
Cash needed to deliver games development promise
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