Interviews// Codemasters Online's Ed Relf

SPOnG: (Laughs) Fair enough. Have you seen the petition that's been put to the Prime Minister to get more government support for the games industry? Should the government be doing more to help the industry?

Ed Relf: I mean, the games industry is huge these days, right? It's one of the fastest growing entertainment businesses. I hear reports that it outstrips the music industry, for example, in terms of revenue. Anything that gives kids, students, people in school the opportunity to get into the games industry can only be a good thing.

Certainly, people that I speak to, if the government is going to give more tax breaks, that means that more games will be developed in the UK. That can only be a good thing for the entire industry. You know, I feel that as a country the games that generally come out of the UK are incredibly creative and anything that helps games development within the UK can only be a good thing and I'd love the opportunity for more children, for more university courses – whatever it is, (to be) geared towards games development. It can only be a positive thing.

I don't know about yourself, I got into the games industry by pure fluke, and if I look around this room right now I bet you that 75% if not 80% of the people in this room fell into the games industry by accident. It's a great industry, of course it is. But there's not a... if I go and speak to my careers advisor when I was at school and said, 'Hey, I'd like to get into the games industry' then he'd probably give me a bit of a blank expression back. But if I said, 'Hey, I want to get into the movie industry', they could probably push me in a couple of different directions.

Sure, that's changing, but with more and more games being developed in the UK, sure there's going to be more and more university courses geared towards it and that can only be a positive thing.


SPOnG: Do you feel that the UK industry suffers because we don't get similar tax breaks to, say, Canada? For example, we'll be seeing a lot of Eidos's operations move to Canada...

Ed Relf: It's a subject I don't know too much about if I'm being honest with you. I understand that some countries do have those kinds of thing in place with the government. I'm not really involved too much on the games development side, so I can't really comment.


SPOnG: Fair enough. How do you feel about the job ELSPA's doing at the moment?

Ed Relf: Again, it's very difficult for me to comment on that, because... I think that the ratings are good – as a customer, I've witnessed on numerous occasions - standing in GAME, or PC World, or any kind of retailer in the UK – kids picking up games that are 18-rated and an adult saying, 'No, that's an 18 game, you can't have that, you can have this instead'. That can only be a good thing. That's all I can really comment on – I don't have too much interaction on that side of things, unfortunately.


SPOnG: Thanks for your time!