Creatives often struggle to hide their disdain for the finance department. Designers, film directors, musicians, copywriters and artists rely on their intuition; they see creativity as a scarce resource and financial logic as lacking imagination. It’s not unusual for financial success to be deemed subordinate to great entertainment and artistic merit. Some of this attitude pervades the computer games industry. Yet because game play involves completing levels to gain rewards, coders tend to think about strategy more deeply than other creatives. Trends in the videogames sector often prefigure developments in the wider economy.
Videogame executives have thought hard about how to benefit from the creation of platforms, network effects, digitisation, and the shift from a physical product sold once to recurring subscription revenue. A commercially successful game requires considerable creativity with business models and marketing nous.
In the UK, videogame companies are a genuine success story. The UK videogame sector is the largest in Europe, contributing £1.8bn towards GDP. That is partly due to government policy, with the Video Games Tax Relief Act allowing companies to claim a tax break of up to 25% of their production costs. Gaming is a global market, so overseas revenues are an important source of earnings. Unlike manufacturing, games are a knowledge industry, unaffected by supply-chain difficulties or EU border red tape.
The industry employs 50,000 highly skilled staff in the UK, mostly outside London. The associated spin-off benefits include the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity promoting the study of
