Report Overview
The video games sector is a major economic, cultural and social force in the UK, its reach and influence extending across everyday life and into sectors as diverse as health and education, the arts and defence.
However, despite this proliferation and scale, the body of research into its full breadth of impacts is still at a relatively early stage of development. As a result, decisions about and within the sector are based on a limited, partial view.
Without an overarching framework, it is difficult to see a building body of evidence and a challenge to gain momentum around research priorities. This has vital and far reaching implications for how decisions about games innovation, creativity, policy, partnerships and investment are made.
This scoping study responds to a strong cross sector call for this to rapidly change. With support from the BFI National Lottery Fund, OKRE and Ukie have partnered to identify what is needed to advance further research, giving a richer and more nuanced understanding of how the video games sector shapes our lives, British society, and the UK economy.
It provides research frameworks for the sector’s wide ranging impacts along with a reframed sector definition and interactive supply chain visualisation. In doing so it lays the foundations for a unified impact framework for the social and economic impacts of the UK video games sector, offering a truly innovative means of understanding its widespread and powerful influence.