THE RISE AND RISE OF THE GAMING INDUSTRY GAME ON :

Games development is now a billion-pound British industry, and a major exporter. We look at the sector and meet some of the region’s most successful games developers

By Sam Pither

Around one in six adults in the UK play video games, whether that be on smartphone, console or a computer. Yet how many of us have thought about where those games are made?

In 2019, a report from the British Film Institute found the total GVA generated by all video games developed, published and sold in the UK to be £5.12 billion.

By 2021, according to the BBC, this had risen to £7.16 billion, and there is every indication this number is set to rise further.

In the face of the current economic turbulence, games sales are one of the few sectors to see continued growth, which is bound to see more people entering the sector.

Into Games is a non-profit organisation which aims to connect hundreds of learners, from all backgrounds, with those already working in the industry.

As its CEO, Declan Cassidy, puts it: “When times are di cult, people like to escape, and games are a perfect way to do that”.

The UK Safer Internet Centre found that 58 per cent of eight to 17-year-olds said playing games online had a positive change in their mood, 59 per cent said it made them feel good about themselves and 71 per cent said it made them feel more relaxed and happier.

These positive e ects are not limited to online games, either. A 2021 study from the Oxford Internet Institute found a positive relation between game play and e ective wellbeing in players of EA’s Plants Vs Zombies: Battle for Neighbourville and Nintendo’s Animal Crossing.

Along with playing games, the UK is also great at making them according to Sam Collins, Head of Commercial and Membership at UKIE, the games trade association in the UK.

He said: “Games straddle the intersection of creative and technical capabilities and, for some reason, in the UK we’re brilliant at sitting between those things. Some countries are brilliant at specific areas like animation or design, but the UK, maybe it’s because of our hobbyist nature, is great at all of them”.

It is an industry driven heavily by smaller businesses, with more than 99 per cent of companies employing 250 people or fewer. As a whole, the industry nationwide only employs around 25,000 people.

Those small numbers go a long way, however, with each person employed in the sector contributing approximately £120,000 of GVA to the UK economy, placing it at the top of creative industries in terms of economic contribution per head.

According to data from UKIE, the trade body for the UK games and interactive entertainment industry, there are currently 125 games businesses active in the West Midlands.

Leamington Spa holds the biggest cluster in the region, with around 36 active studios. Together with nearby Warwick, the region has been dubbed “Silicon Spa” in a nod to California’s Silicon Valley.

Its heritage in the region dates back to the 1980s, with a catalogue of titles featuring massive console releases such as Forza and Far Cry and mobile games for companies like Disney, Warner Bros and Sega.

This, in turn, brings opportunity to the region, with the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) estimating there are between 3,000 and 3,500 games industry professionals across the West Midlands, with up to 2,500 of those centred around Leamington Spa.

In 2015, this generated an estimated £224 million GVA in the West Midlands, with £188 million of that coming from what the LEP describes as a core of 50 firms clustered around Leamington, Southam and Warwick.

By 2019, BFI data shows this had risen to a total GVA of £517 million. Considering the exponential growth in the region during the pandemic, it’s fair to assume this number has only grown since.

Along with their economic impact, the video games sector is also a driver of innovation, a key theme of the Treasury’s “Build Back Better strategy”, with much of the technology created by the video games sector repurposed by other creative industries.

One example of this is Stroud-based All Seeing Eye, which created an interactive virtual reality experience named In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats with filmmaker Darren Emerson for the Coventry City of Culture 2021.

Featured on BBC Breakfast, it takes its audience back to 1999, inviting them to go in search of an illegal rave in an explorable virtual world set in Coventry and Warwickshire including a posterstrewn bedroom, secret warehouses and Corley services.

In the following pages we take a look at some examples of the video games sector across our regions, looking at not just the studios, but the infrastructure and ecosystem surrounding and enabling them.

We also look at how Into Games is working to make the industry more accessible for everyone, before finishing with some of the big-money deals made in the sector in the past couple of years.