a map of the uk games industry
DESCRIPTION
A presentation of the approach and findings in our games mapping report, where we used big data sources in order to measure and map the UK video games industry.TRANSCRIPT
A map of the UK games industryJuan Mateos-Garcia, Hasan Bakhshi and Mark LenelLondon, 25 September 2014
OUR QUESTIONSQUESTIONS
1. What is the state and evolution of the UK games industry?2. What is its geography?3. What drives the growth of games clusters? USERS• Investors, commissioners, educators, support agencies and trade bodies who
want to identify hubs of games companies to work with;
• Games companies and companies in other creative and digital industries seeking out partners and collaborators;
• Talent looking for a job in the video games industry;
• Policymakers (both national and local) who need information about the scale, performance and location of the industry,
• Researchers and analysts
How to measure an innovative industry
Business
Analyst
SIC Code
Data
Govt
The traditional way
Problems• Inadequate SIC
codes• Misclassification• Untimely data• Irrelevant dataSolution• Surveys• Brilliant source
of data but…• Expensive to run
and update• Biases?
Business
Analyst
Activity
Data
Web
The big (found) data way
Advantages• No SIC codes• ‘Real-time’ data• Relevant dataNo silver bullet• Messy data• What goes in
and what goes out?
• Our data collection results in a list of 1,902 games companies active in the UK in 2014. Together with official government data, this leads to estimate a games GVA of as much as £1,7 Billion.
• Only around 1/3rd of our dataset covered by official games SIC codes.
Game of phones: 64% of companies for which we have platform data specialise in iOS. 22%
target multiple platforms.
Our findings
22% growth p.a. in company numbers 2011-2013Sector becoming more evenly spread across the UK.Although ~55% of companies are in the South, The North + The Midlands are more important in games than in the Creative Industries overall
Game-making Britannia
We have identified 18 areas with a ‘critical’ mass of games companies, and identified 12 of them as
hubs of high specialisation in games production.
Where arethe
game-making hubs?
A tale of twelve hubs…
The hubs are diverse in their platform specialisation and
industrial structure (compare iOS heavy, micro-Brighton with “consolidated” Warwick).
What are the drivers of games clustering?
We explore this by combining our data with open government data (ONS, Ofcom, UCAS)
Co-location: Games companies co-locate with other creative industries like Design, Advertising, Software, Music or Film, Video and TV: Games industry is an integral part of UK’s creative economy
Broadband: We find a link between household broadband speeds and games clustering.
Education: Stronger games clustering in areas with a supply of specialist talent (and accredited courses).
Conclusions and next steps• Our data reveals an industry in the midst of an
entrepreneurial boom -> disruption, creative crossover, also fragmentation.
• Although London + South dominate we see thriving hubs elsewhere, from Wales to Scotland and the North.
• Our results underscore the importance of infrastructure – broadband + talent -> policy implications.
• We are scratching the surface of our dataset. Our hope is to use it as the foundation for a ‘live’ platform for the UK games industry
