It's almost six months since UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne unveiled tax breaks in the budget, yet the details are still being ironed out.

Trade association UKIE was quick to respond to the news, unveiling a nationwide consultation process with developers and industry professionals in order to hand the Government detailed feedback on just how the tax break should be implemented.

That consultation process is now over, and UKIE – along with fellow association TIGA – has handed those in the corridors of power the games industry's verdict.

We caught up with UKIE CEO Dr. Jo Twist for her take on what the tax breaks could mean, and what the Government needs to do next.

Pocket Gamer: Overall, how did the consultation process with developers go?

Jo Twist: We wanted to make sure that all UK games businesses - whether they were UKIE members or not - had a chance to give their views on how the new system would work and so we created lots of different ways for them to get involved.

This included invitations to send in their thoughts via a dedicated email address, via Twitter or our Facebook page. We also toured the country to speak directly to developers. We had great turnout and lively debate at all the sessions.

In total we involved over 221 companies in the process and their thoughts are what you can read in our response to government. Of course there was beer and networking after each event.

I notice you consulted with TIGA before delivering your assessment on the tax break. How important was this?

It was absolutely vital that industry spoke together on this issue. We therefore made sure that speaking to TIGA was part of our consultation plans from the beginning.

I met with Richard [Wilson, TIGA CEO] before the consultation began to offer to do some joint events, then we met again once we had our first draft and I gave him a copy, going through each of the points to ensure there were no major discrepancies.

A lot of developers we speak to are frustrated by having two trade associations to go to. Could you envision further co-operation between yourselves and TIGA on similar issues in the future?

With issues such as tax breaks it shouldn't matter which trade body you belong to, that's why we opened up our consultation process up to any UK games businesses - 85 of the businesses that we spoke to at our regional seminars were not UKIE members.

At UKIE, we're here to serve the entire games industry, so when it is in the best interests of the UK games industry to co-operate then of course we will, with whoever we need to.

This of course includes TIGA and we shall continue to offer to collaborate with them in any future work that we do on key issues that affect the UK games industry.

What did you make of the Creative Scotland report that suggested the Scottish games industry contributes nothing to the nation's economy?

The information in last week's Creative Scotland report is clearly wrong.

We know that Scotland is a powerhouse of games talent and businesses, which is one of the reasons we opened our UKIE Scotland office there this year.

But the report did highlight a long standing issue about the quality and classification of official data for our industry. If we are to measure the success of the tax scheme, these figures are of vital importance to get right.

This is something we would welcome the chance to collaborate with TIGA on too.

How important is it that the Government recognises the contribution of the industry before delivering the tax breaks?

With Government supporting the games sector through tax breaks and the introduction of computer science into schools, it has now never been more important to measure the size and growth of the industry, and really prove value that it brings to UK economies.

If we want to truly shout about the UK as the best place to be in the games and interactive entertainment business, then we need the accurate evidence to shout about.

The same goes for the nature of our industry's business models and shift to digital, which is why we want to get more people adding their data to our Digital Charts project.

We know that Government wants to work with industry to improve reporting and we want to help by providing access to the data sets that we and others own – we should be pooling our resources and be stronger together across the games industry to make sure we can share the correct picture.

We are already talking to Nesta, to Creative Scotland and others about this.

We are pleased to be part of the Creative Industries Council proposed data group but much more needs to be done collaboratively with all interested parties if we are to avoid further misrepresentation of the UK's games and interactive entertainment sector.

How much of an impact do you think the tax breaks will have on the average studio?

Hopefully it will mean that the will lessen the commercial risk for many developers who really want to make really distinctive British games and so increase our range of games getting to market.

At the same time, we hope that this will help create the level playing field that our UK industry needs in order to grow and to attract investment.

We are particularly pleased to hear that Government is considering including the production costs of downloadable content and post-launch development, which would give the UK an advantage over other countries.

Tax breaks are not the only thing we need however and having the right, diverse talent coming through to the industry is also vital. That's why it's great that Government also, earlier this year, listened to our arguments about having computer science on the curriculum.

And we're always looking at other ways to make the ecosystem as good as possible for games businesses – we're currently chairing a series of meetings for crowdfunding platforms to see how we can make crowdfunding operate as efficiently as possible for games companies in the UK.
Thanks to Jo for her time.