UK Governments Announces £4 Million Funding For Homegrown IPs

Published: April 26, 2019 10:40 AM /

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The government of the United Kingdom has announced £4 million of funding for games based on homegrown IP's such as Wallace & Gromit and Peaky Blinders. Creators of Wallace & Gromit Aardman Animation will work with the University of South Wales, Tiny Rebel Games, and digital specialists Potato and Sugar Creative to work on new projects based around the award-winning stop-motion animated intellectual property. The project has been called 'hugely ambitious' by Andrew Chitty of UK Research and Innovation, and will feature both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality experiences.

As well as the projects based on Wallace & Gromit the funding will also help to produce a new VR title based on hit drama series Peaky Blinders to be released in 2020 and lead by London-based VR studio Maze Theory. The funding is part of £33 Million which is being allocated to help enhance the country's immersive technology sector, as well as to help support new talent in the sector across the country.

Greg Clark, the UK Business Secretary, had the following to say on the governments new initiative.

Success stories like award-winning Wallace and Gromit, and BAFTA-winning Peaky Blinders are part of the reason why our creative industries are truly world-leading - attracting audiences both here in the UK and internationally and helping create a sector already worth some £100 billion to our economy. It's why through our modern Industrial Strategy we're investing to build on this huge global demand for UK creative content and ensure we lead the world in the next generation of entertainment.
The Wallace & Gromit projects will begin to show up over the next 18 months and promises to present some truly groundbreaking augmented and virtual reality experiences.


Quick Take

As an alumnus of the University of South Wales myself I can say that it's super exciting to see what they will contribute to the Wallace & Gromit projects, especially considering that Mike Bithnell (another USW alumnus) has produced some pretty damn groundbreaking stuff in his time. The only disappointment with this announcement was that a London based studio was chosen for the Peaky Blinders project over someone from my native land of Birmingham, considering the amount of smaller studios which have cropped up in the region over the past few years. I'm sure that Maze Theory is going to produce some fantastic work of course, but all things considered, a studio more centered in the culture and history of the show may have been able to bring something special to the project. Only time will tell how well this thing is going to turn out.

What do you think about this new funding? Are you looking forward to these new projects? Let us know in the comments down below. 

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Will has been writing about video games professionally since 2016 and has covered everything from AAA game reviews to industry events and everything in… More about William