A real blow to sector morale and a wake-up call for government

REALTime Worlds was one of the most substantial independent games developers in the UK.

In that sense it is a pretty traumatic loss. This was a big games business to go down.

RTW had an impressive management team and a very skilled workforce. The fact RTW had all these ingredients for success in place and ran into trouble will be a real blow for the Scottish games industry's morale - and indeed the whole UK games industry's morale.

I hope this wakes up the UK government about the games industry. We were promised tax breaks for games production.

At the moment there is un-level playing field - our competitors in Canada, especially, but also the US and France all have tax breaks - in the case of Quebec in Canada, the government pays 37.5 per cent of the salaries of the developers. That puts the UK at a real cost disadvantage when we are competing for overseas investment. Scotland has some very talented people. It has a legacy and a tradition. However, that will count for very little if the industry can not compete with other countries.

The industry has come through a pretty tough time in recent years, with the recession causing a major reduction in the amount of games people have been buying.

The knock on effect of this is that the big publishers, such as Sony and Microsoft, have not been placing the same level of orders with games developers. Ironically, we are hoping this situation will improve as the economy recovers, but any upturn has obviously come too late for RTW The other major problem facing the industry is the brain drain of talent being attracted overseas. We did a survey recently, and three quarters of games companies reported instances of staff simply leaving the country.

We can't just pretend that leaving things as they are will see the industry flourish. The new coalition government must keep their pre-election promise and create the kind of tax breaks we see in other countries

• Dr Richard Wilson is CEO of TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry.