WHAT’S NEW WITH THE UK GAMING MARKET?

The UK gaming market is the largest video game sector in Europe. Marketwise is second only to Germany and sixth globally. This sector blew up during the pandemic, rising from £5.12 billion to £7.16 billion, and now it seems to be scaling down. Despite the number of lay-backs and the economic reassessment of the industry, the overall picture seems positive. Recently Games Investor Consulting published a TIGA analysis that estimates the growth of the UK games industry by 11,4% between December 2021 and April 2023 with an altogether upsurge of the workforce. It’s clear from the data how the industry has a significant impact on the UK economy. This country is a recognised global leader in this market, exporting groundbreaking technologies such as Virtual Production (Treasury) and Unreal Engine (Epic Games) gaming technology applied to movies. Let’s discover how the history of games in the UK and what impact it’s having nowadays, both economically and socially. A history made of bits. The history of video games starts with the history of computers. In the development of this technology, the UK was a crucial participant from Babbage and Lovelace mechanical devices and primitive coding languages to Alan Turing’s foundation of modern computing science. Thanks to the initial discoveries between 1950 and 1960, it was around the early 70s that computers turned from military devices to general-use ones. The first video game reported is Draughts by the scientist Christopher Strachey, developed at the British National Physical Laboratory and completed in 1951. Up until the 70s games were mostly mechanical arcade games, electro-mechanical games and pinball machines played in arcades all over the UK. The first digital video games arrived in 1973 with Pong, by Atari, Inc. This video game, and several other sports-themed ones rocketed to die down in the next year. In the following years, the industry seemed to not be able to attract the attention of the public sustainably, until in 1978 Taito released the shooting game Space Invaders, beginning the golden age of arcade games. The popularity of Space Invaders helped the home gaming industry, which always struggled to pick up before. Alongside the popularity of the new Atari VCS, other portable games grew in popularity such as the LCD games by Atari, Sharp, Tandy and Casio. In 1983 there was a video game revolution, with the overtake of the home computer. Computer games were more affordable, and the quality of their graphics matched the second-generation consoles. In 1984 computer games became the largest gaming UK sector. Computer games would rule for almost a decade undefeated, until in the 90s home consoles started to gain popularity, replacing computers as the main gaming device. In the UK the first actors in the consoles sector were Sega consoles: the Master System and Mega Drive. The graphic ability of these two devices exceeded computers by 8-bit and 16-bit respectively, also being more affordable. Other popular consoles that came out in the 90s were Nintendo’s Game Boy and Super NES and later the fourth generation 32-bit consoles, Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo 64. But what would bring UK to the success is the raise of independent team of developers and their indie games. In the 2000s the indie game model started with names such as World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, and Fez. This model opened up a new channel for production and distribution of video games. The popular casino games also played its part in the history of games, developing from the brick-and-mortar slot machines, roulette, and card games to their digital version that players can enjoy online. Bonus Finder list some of the top online casinos available in the UK and from their recent report, there is a lot to choose from! Current UK games landscape The UK gaming market is diverse, with a mix of established and indie developers. Key players like Rockstar North, Electronic Arts have a significant presence. But there are also many other names that are still making history today producing innovative titles, such as Codemasters, Creative Assembly, Sumo Digital, Jagex, and many more. Some of this company literally started from a bedroom, to become some of the most known and forward-thinking in the world. Currently the 88% of young adults play video games and 29% of them play with strangers online. The most popular consoles in 2022 was PlayStation 5 (PS5) with 800,000 units shipped. The genres of video games that are most played are the creative ones, with building games played by 51% of the players, this genre is followed by team games and action/adventure, with a percentage of 37% and 34% respectively. The fairly recent genre of virtual world, played with headset and portable and home consoles is less popular than other, with only 32% of players giving their preference for them and just a 1% of users owning a headset. Conclusion Overall, despite the post-pandemic downturn, the UK gaming market is still thriving thanks to the strong big company names, is involvement in the entertainment industry and the ever-growing indie developers that animates the sector.