SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The general director of Cultural Industries, Intellectual Property and Cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Carmen Páez, highlighted on Wednesday Spain’s commitment to putting the video game industry “in focus” and on the “political agenda” of the European Union with a few days that start in Tenerife on the occasion of the community presidency.
In statements to journalists before the inauguration, he indicated that this sector is one of those with the “greatest growth, potential and transformation” in the field of digital culture, at the same time that he underlined the “reference” character of the Canary Islands.
He has pointed out that the archipelago is already a “power” in the audiovisual sector thanks, in part, to its tax incentives, and for this reason, he has opened the door, together with the Ministry of Economy, to open “little by little” the range for the field of videogames since the tax structure is oriented to film shootings.
Thus, he has insisted that “the support of public institutions is important” for a sector that, apart from its economic dimension, is also “culture”, a fact that the Congress of Deputies already declared in 2009 and that Spain proposed in within the EU at the end of last year as a cultural creative industry. “We have no doubts,” she added.
Páez has detailed that videogames billed more than 2,000 million euros in Spain last year and still have “a lot of growth potential” so he understands that it must be “supported” in the Canary Islands and throughout the national territory.
In his opinion, “videogames are still a cultural product with a lot of intellectual property, there are scriptwriters, developers, cartoonists, translators, there are countless creators who come together and create a cultural product with their own language.”
For this reason, it has made it clear that from the public administrations it is necessary to “support the video game from its cultural dimension” and also face “the challenges” it presents, such as doing “awareness work” about its proper use and the risk of addictions.
In this sense, he has highlighted the function that is carried out around the European classification system PEGI, which is responsible for the protection of players or the determination of age and whose representatives will be at the conferences that are held in Tenerife Espacio de las Artes.
