York and back

This week Rick travelled up to York to attend one of the Audiences of the Future open days, and was surprised to find himself the only games person in the room…

“Public funding body Innovate UK told me that games could be a part of each of the big Demonstrator projects, whether explicit games projects or as technological components. How could they not be? Games are leading the way in Immersive on technology, on designing agency into virtual and augmented experiences, on commercialisation and in terms of mass audience participation. There are very few examples of Immersive projects that have hit Innovate’s required level of engagement for these Demonstrators – over 100,000 users – that are not games. So you would expect games companies to be in the room. Sadly that wasn’t the case today. Instead, we had VR and TV agencies talking about 360 video, virtual museums and brand experiences.”

Although there is over £20m in funding for Immersive projects from this new Innovate UK fund, it looks like Innovate have not reached out to the games trade press, where there is basically no coverage of this significant funding which is open to games companies. “If games companies don’t know there’s funding available, they won’t apply which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Innovate need to reach out to sectors they don’t know so well, like games, especially when those sectors are leading on Immersive.”

What about the secret project?

Rick’s secret project continues to roll forward, which now apparently involves dead drops and codewords. All he was willing to say about this was that he led discussions with 2 universities and 2 technology companies.

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