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Tag Games are thrilled to announce the launch of Angry Birds Action! This fast-paced pinball smasher is available for free on iOS and Android devices and comes to you just in time for The Angry Birds Movie, due in cinemas next month.

Developed in partnership with publishers Rovio, Angry Birds Action! is a riotous, pig-pummelling pinball adventure that look set to be our biggest release yet!

This month’s GDC in San Francisco marked the 30th edition of the event, but the first for our programmer Steven Taarland, who was making his debut at the show. We caught up with him for some reflections on what was a busy and productive three days.

With a long weekend of gluttony fast approaching many of you will be looking forward to having a bellyful of Easter Eggs sooner rather than later. As much as we love a nice chocolatey treat or two at the Tag office, in our line of work Easter Eggs of a quite different kind are an ingrained part of our culture. With that in mind, we decided to take a look into the vaults at some of the most memorable ones.

By the time you read this our CEO Paul Farley and Head of Biz Dev Nina Cliff will be California-bound, as they head to this year’s GDC in San Francisco. As always GDC will be packed with announcements, demonstrations and industry-defining summits, so we can’t wait to see what the 2016 installment brings.
 

It was time to dig out the passports this month, as we headed out to Casual Connect 2016 for the first international trip of the year. Casual Connect is a series of conferences held all over the globe, with a focus on creative and business trends in the gaming sector. There's a huge mobile development presence at the shows and so they provide a great opportunity to meet, network and engage with the industry's finest. With this in mind, we headed out to Amsterdam for this year's European event.

The Tag Team were happy today to hear more good news about the games industry in Scotland. Reports by The Courier and Develop Online confirm that since 2010, there has been a 600% surge in the number of game development companies in the country since 2010, with over 100 studios now operating across the land. As home to over 30 of these firms, Dundee is at the forefront of this expansion and local MSP Joe FitzPatrick described games as "a massive success story for Scotland." 

It’s been a fantastic start to February here at Tag Games, as we announce that we are among the first companies to win support from the UK Games Fund.

The UK Games Fund is a government-sponsored initiative aimed at supporting growth in the UK games industry. Through funding, the UK Games Fund encourages developers to build new IP, innovate, expand and grow. Studios that submit successful proposals receive a grant of up to £25,000 for an initial game prototype, with potential for additional funding should the project go beyond this stage.

Since Tag Games opened in 2006, we’ve been lucky enough to be hired by a steady stream of publishers, broadcasters and IP owners looking to work with a reliable, talented studio. Back in those early days the work-for-hire model was very much the standard between developers and publishers and at Tag things were no different. Make game, ship game, get paid, handshake. All very simple.

It was a straightforward way of doing business, but not necessarily one that encouraged long-term client relationships. Once we realised the potential of the free-to-play (F2P) market however, the goalposts moved both in terms of the games we made and the way we worked with publishers.