Scottishgames.net front page

We’ve just closed the main conference for NEoN ‘09 and in a Perth Road venue I’ve got Brian Baglow, of Denki, to sit down and explain Scottishgames.net, the site he’s just launched. Now anyone that knows Brian knows of his heavy involvement in the Scottish Digital Media sector so when he tells me that “The goal [of Scottishgames.net] is to be the Facebook of the Scottish Games Industry” I can’t help but wonder how he plans to accomplish this goal. It’s simple – he’s using a ning.

Ning describes itself as a service that “lets you create and join social networks for you interests and passions”. This means that Scottishgames.net will be able to include; creators, consumers, academics, companies, policy makers and the media. This means events such as the Dare To Be Digital and NEoN will be able to create their own groups to which interested parties can join and feed into. This is important as while all areas of the sector are growing they are doing so in isolation, Brian hopes that Scottishgames.net will act as a hub for them all to interact and collaborate and also an information source for policy makers and the media to find out all they need to know about the sector. The ability to create a group or forum around an interest or activity shows off the social interaction side, with Baglow listing numerous possibilities such as Augmented Reality Games, 3D modelling and games reviews. One particularly interesting feature is that the main news feed on the front page updates with any recent blogs or posts by anyone, currently this is approved through Brian first but he aims to remove this feature as soon as possible.

Brian says the main aim for the site is to give the Digital Media sector in Scotland a space to find out about each other; to provide a collaborative workspace and admits this is where Scottishgames.biz, the old site, failed. The lack of collaboration made some users feel it was Brian’s blog a perception he is extremely keen to move away from, stating that the community is bigger than one man and they should use the ning as they see fit.

One question that featured early in our interview was; Why now? What was it that had made Baglow suddenly decide to launch his vision for a more inclusive Digital Media scene? It was his experiences, primarily over the last year, with outsider perceptions towards the sector;

“Throughout 2009 it has become obvious at the general lack of support for the Scottish Digital Media sector”

While some embraced and publicised the strides the industry were making many more simply weren’t aware of it at all. Brian noticed that no publication will really talk about Digital Media and games within Scotland outside of a profile section or recruitment advert, that the majority of journalists truly seemed to have no interest in engaging with the industry or community. This can be painfully apparent when an event secures a major exclusive or an interesting speaker and the media both locally and Scotland wide seems almost determined to simply ignore it.

The last statement Brian made shows exactly how much love he has for the Scottish scene and how determined he is to see it build on it’s current successes;

“My hope for Scottishgames.net is that it will actually empower the Interactive and Digital Media community; the creators, consumers, educators, the media and the policy makers. And provide a platform for the whole of Digital Media to gain the global recognition it deserves.

Scotland has so much to be proud of and yet outside off all of  these discrete groups nobody knows. My plan is to change that.”

A lofty goal but an admirable one, providing a unified voice for one of the most fragmented industries around, a place where the companies, the politicians and the players can discuss the importance of supporting a relatively young and thriving industry and simply a chance for companies and others to share their experience of the scene can only benefit the sector as a whole.