Scope SCREEN INDUSTRY VIEWS

SPENDING NOT-SO-LIBERALLY: VIDEOGAMES REMAIN UNFUNDED

Dan Golding

It’s hardly the biggest issue to come out of the 2019 federal election, but many in the Australian games industry will be wondering where the re-election of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaves them.

Videogame policy became an unexpected topic of discussion late in the campaign. This was largely driven by the suite of cultural policies put forward by the Australian Labor Party (ALP); among many other commitments to the arts, it promised – if elected – to restore the now-defunct Australian Interactive Games Fund (AIGF) to the tune of A$25 million.

The AIGF has had a long and storied history. Established by Julia Gillard’s ALP government in 2013, it boasted a pool of A$20 million, to be awarded to Australian game developers and their projects. Halfway through the fund’s implementation, however, Tony Abbott’s Liberal government was elected and the AIGF was cancelled; the remaining A$10 million was then redistributed to other programs in the 2014 budget.

Had the ALP risen to power this year, and the AIGF, been restored, it would’ve represented the only federal funding avenue for Australian videogames. As it stands, however, there is nothing. The only money to go to anything approximating the local games industry since the AIGF’s dissolution has been from former arts minister George Brandis’ controversial Catalyst fund (A$125,000 for an exhibition of racing games at South Australia’s National Motor Museum) and a single competitive grant from the Australia Council for the Arts (A$23,000 for Melbourne’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival, which I am on the board of).

So it was with some excitement that the