Displaying items by tag: ron curry

Two of Australia’s major games industry groups - the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) - are merging their organisations to create one single association.

Australia's Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, the lobby group for computer and video games manufacturers, continues to expand its membership, boosting its ranks with the latest admissions of independent game developer SMG Studio and entertainment company Hoyts.

Australia has an enormous role to play in terms of fostering the country’s games sector, according to the Labor Party’s Shadow Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland.

Things move fast in both the tech world and politics. Once the darling of the political landscape, it seems the Australian games development industry again needs to raise its profile. As such, the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) chief executive Ron Curry has got on to the front foot with an open letter to Senator Mitch Fifield, the Minister for Communications and the Arts.

Phew! We can all rest easy in Australia it turns out that game Classification Board is doing its job.

The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association has labelled the call to review the classification of a number of  video games currently on the Australian market as a waste of time and tax-payers money, a move that could cost over $330,000.

Despite general economic uncertainties, Australia's interactive games industry remains upbeat despite a 12.8 per cent contraction in 'traditional retail' computer and video games sales to $1.5 billion in 2011, according to Australia's Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA).

The video games industry's peak lobby has welcomed Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor's release of proposed classification guidelines for computer games that includes the introduction of an R18+ 'adult' classification.

In the early '90s parents used to discourage kids to touch video games in the belief that they would have been somehow not good for them. Well, 20 years later those kids are still playing, with research predicting 92 percent of Australian households will play video games by 2012.

No concrete decision made today at the standing committee of Attorneys-General on a change to Australia's classification laws around interactive entertainment.  Instead the AG's agreed to introduce guidelines for judging the effect of an R18+ Classification introduction   iTWire spoke to Ron Curry from the interactive games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) about what this means for the local market.