Conservatives claim government 'stands naked' over video games policy

It’s funny how things turn out. If you’d told me at the outset of my long career as a gamer that one day the political party which demoralised the miners and waged war in the Falklands would be rallying at video game’s defence, I’d have laughed at you.

When Tory stalwart Boris Johnson infamously amused the world by writing an eloquent and idiotic piece in The Telegraph describing games as ‘blasted gizmos’, we nodded. It was about what we expected a Tory to say.

Yet here we are, in the freezing early months of 2009, with Ed Vaizey MP criticising the Labour government for its negligence towards the video game industry.

"The Government's strategy for videogames has been shown to be nothing more than a sham," he said (it had been trying to grass up Canada to the World Trade Organisation for helping its own games industry, but that move failed).

In relation to that gambit, Vaisey quoted the industry: “the Government now 'stands naked, bereft of a credible fiscal policy with which to support the sector.’”

The answer? Tax breaks. "The Government must act now to support an industry that is world-beating, job-creating and at the heart of our creative industries,” Vaisey insisted - and he spoke with some justification, as it was recently revealed that the UK video game industry is the second largest after the USA’s.