Conference Looks At Mapping Multi-million Pound Computer Games Industry

Published on: 10 Jul, 2016
Updated on: 16 Jul, 2016

Journalism student Drew Lernihan, who has been writing stories for The Guildford Dragon NEWS for the past two week as part of his work experience, signs off with a story about his passion – computer games.

Computer gaming is a huge mulit-million pound industry throughout the world, while Guildford is gettting a good reputation as being the UK hub where these games are devised and created, with EA’s Criterion Games studio located in Onslow Street.

Drew takes up the story of a networking conference he attended at the University of Surrey.

Tiberium Alliances is a computer game by EA Games, that has its UK base in Guildford.

People from across the computer gaming industry gathered at the G3 gaming event held at the University of Surrey to share ideas and to network.

Dr Jo Twist, the chief officer of Ukie, a trade body for the UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry, spoke about her work and her goal for ‘mapping out’ this industry, bringing all its factors together for the benefit of those who work in it.

Computer gaming is a large part of the entertainment industry in the UK. According to Ukie, the total consumer spend on the gaming industry in the UK in 2015 was £4.2bn. Across the globe its worth is expected to grow from $91.8bn last year to $118.6bn by 2019.

Dr Twist added that it is estimated that two specific parts of the gaming industry known as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) alone are now worth billions of dollars worldwide.

VR involves the player wearing a headset which they look through, thus taking them right into the action.

While AR is a new innovation currently being developed and tested. Again the player wears a headset, but the player’s current environment forms the game’s surrounding. The clever bit is that computer images are then ‘injected’ onto the player’s real world.

Ukie is collaborating with Nesta, an innovation charity with a mission to help people and organisations bring their ideas to life. Its mission is to support new ideas which focus on helping improve lives, and also ways the gaming industry in the UK can be properly mapped out.

Using its Big Data footprint method, Nesta aims to track the movement of gaming companies by tracing their online ‘footprint’, seeing their impact on the internet and how many people are talking or interacting with that firm. It calls this its ‘living platform’.

Nesta hopes this could support lobbying for funding within the gaming industry, since it will show its true scale.