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.

1. A map of the UK games
industry
Juan Mateos-Garcia, Hasan Bakhshi and Mark Lenel
London, 25 September 2014

2. OUR QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
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

3. How to measure an innovative
industry
Busines
s
SIC Code
Govt
Data
Analyst
The traditional
way
Problems
• Inadequate SIC
codes
• Misclassification
• Untimely data
• Irrelevant data
Solution
• Surveys
• Brilliant source
of data but…
• Expensive to run
and update
• Biases?
Business
Activity
Web
Data
Analyst
The big (found)
data way
Advantages
• No SIC codes
• ‘Real-time’ data
• Relevant data
No silver bullet
• Messy data
• What goes in
and what goes
out?

4. Our findings
• 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.

5. Game-making
Britannia
22% growth p.a. in
company numbers 2011-
2013
Sector 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

6. Where are
the
game-making
hubs?
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.

7. A tale of twelve hubs…
The hubs are diverse in their
platform specialisation and
industrial structure (compare iOS
heavy, micro-Brighton with
“consolidated” Warwick).

8. 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).

9. 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

10. Juan.mateos-garcia@nesta.org.uk
@JMateosGarcia
PSN -> MC_CTHULHU
Hasan.bakhshi@nesta.org.uk
@hasanbakhshi
Mark.Lenel@arkenford.co.uk