Ukie has today published its manifesto for the 2019 general election, setting out how the next Government can support the country’s thriving video games and interactive entertainment industry.
The trade body has produced 10 key policy recommendations for Government to help achieve the industry’s ambition to turn the UK into the best place to make, sell and play games in the world.
The proposals are:
- Providing public funding for cultural video games from sources such as the Arts Council and National Lottery, bringing the funding of games in line with other creative industries.
- Assist the sector’s efforts to scale up regional interactive entertainment clusters, creating extra jobs and driving economic growth across the whole country.
- Promote the UK’s regional video game industry success story further by funding new, or existing, local game festivals akin to the London Games Festival.
- Extend the UK Games Fund for prototyping video games and establish additional funding for mid stage projects to help turn promising concepts into sustainable businesses.
- Encourage the use of games as a classroom tool across all subjects and change Ofsted inspection criteria to prioritise creativity.
- Aspire to turn every school in the country into a Digital Schoolhouse to bring its inspiring play-based approach to teaching Computing to every child.
- Grow the esports sector by providing public funding for grassroots organisations, ensuring leading international esports talent can enter the UK and to create the infrastructure to help UK esports businesses reach a growing global audience.
- Advocate, in partnership with industry, the use of games as a key digital literacy tool for people of all ages to safely navigate the online world.
- Support from Government for our efforts to improve diversity in the sector, following the results of our diversity census (due for publication in early 2020).
- Government, academia and industry to work together to support robust research into the way players engage with games.
You can read the manifesto in full here.
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Dr Jo Twist OBE, CEO of Ukie, said:
“We call on the next Government to confidently support the video games industry, which is a high-growth, innovative and nationally significant creative industry.
The UK games industry’s thriving development scene needs support to create engaging thought-provoking entertainment for diverse audiences.
By unlocking incentives already available to fellow creative industries, the next Government would encourage thousands of small and medium sized video companies to invest in diverse talent and develop bold, original content – further increasing our sector’s global standing.”
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For more information about Ukie's work, please contact George Osborn, our Head of Communications, at george@ukie.org.uk.