TIGA rounds off a successful year, and looks to future

Author: TIGA

Tiga rounded off a hectic year with its AGM and Awards on Wednesday 14th December.

The AGM marked the 5th year of TIGAs existence, with membership standing at 113 companies - the highest yet.

The AGM debated and approved a motion to give statutory board representation to publisher owned studios. This is a departure for TIGA who were set up at the beginning of 2001 to represent independent development studios.

Since 2001 there has been a 40% reduction in the number of studios and many who have been bought by publishers have expressed a wish to remain members of TIGA - two good examples are IOMO who were acquired by Infospace and Swordfish who were recently acquired by Vivendi.

Moreover the work TIGA is doing on best practice has attracted the likes of Pivotal Studios owned by Eidos, Sony London and Cambridge Studios, and Codemasters to join recently.

The AGM voted unanimously to allow up to 4 publisher developers to be represented on the board The other board places are 10 Full and 2 Associate places for independent developers who retain a voting majority (nb there has never been a contested vote at TIGA boards).

The main attraction of the annual Xmas dinner were the 5 awards given to members and voted on by members.

The five award categories and winners were:

1.Best PC/Console Game developed by a TIGA member was a close call between Juiced, Buzz The music quiz and Rebellion's Sniper Elite which took the prize.

2.Best Handheld Console Game by a Tiga member was won by Exient's FIFA 06 who pipped Blitz's PacMan for the award.

3.Best mobile game developed by a Tiga member was the closest fought result with Championship Manager 5 Solo from Dundee outfit Dynamo Games, beating off Sensible Soccer by Kuju and Fast and Furious 3D by Juice.

4.The Tiga member Company to make the biggest contribution to the development sector, was won by the evergreen Blitz Games.

5.And the final Award for the Individual who has made the greatest contribution to the development sector went to TIGA's popular current Chairman Ian Baverstock of Kuju

Giving the prizes away, Tiga CEO Fred Hasson said:

"This is the 3rd year of the Tiga awards. The numbers of members nominating and voting grows every year so that this year we had a genuine hard fought contest. These awards we are sure one day will become the equivalent to the 'professional footballers awards'. The Tiga awards are about developers voting for their peer group (and competitors), which has to be the ultimate accolade - and a sign that the sector is maturing!"