David Cameron and Silicon City. Wot no games?

Last week David Cameron was widely covered in the newspapers surrounding his ambition to create a Silicon City in East London. Although you might expect us to be excited about this it actually left us feeling a bit deflated and annoyed. Why, why is it time for a bulleted list? Yes yes it is.

Reasons Why David Cameron and Silicon City annoyed TGAM.

• Video Games weren't mentioned at all in the coverage we read and we've just finished reading the excellent excellent Replay: the History of Video Games which is not just a damn fine book but it is so meticulously researched that we had revelation after revelation about how games came to be but also how games ended up being responsible for a great deal of the technological stuff that we now take for granted (including operating systems, twitter and facebook). To omit games seems a little bit short sighted when in fact we do have a good games industry in this country........
• Especially with the increasing frustration over the scrapping of tax breaks for the game industry earlier this year. Who knows, maybe this silicon city idea might see tax breaks tabled again???
• Although we often skip over EDGE's region specific sections detailing regions from around the world with excellence in game development we do actually have a fair few silicon cities already dotted around the country . Asking personnel to move to London to do what they already in other parts of the country essentially means all those people who work in the games industry taking a pay cut of a couple of grand to live in London. Think again Cameron. Think differently.
• The aforementioned snubbing is yet another example of how the government just doesn't have a clue when it comes to the games industry (video games not the Olympic games which is a waste of fuc...boo, hisssss, boo). There was hope that there would be an active interest when games seemed to be bearing up in the economic downturn but still, to date, games have only ever been researched by the DCMS on the harmful effects rather than support an industry in an ever more difficult and competitive global market. But once again it is more about education and economics which doesn't ever come into play when lovies and darlings want to make hemorrhage money making films or worse, keep Opera from dying.
  

So we'd recommend that MPs responsible for creating a Silicon City watch all of videogaiden, get an EDGE subscription, read Replay and make former games journalist Kieron Gillen Gamer Laureate. Cunts.