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Gaming paradox: UK games industry expanding and shrinking simultaneously

TIGA unearths 'impossible feat'

Gaming paradox: UK games industry expanding and shrinking simultaneously

The UK games development sector has performed an 'impossible feat' by both expanding and shrinking at the same time.

TIGA's annual report into the state of the UK games industry, 'Making Games in the UK Today: June 2014', has found that while the number of studios in the UK has increased from 448 to 620, there was actually a 9 percent drop in the proportion of studios with more than four staff members.

So, while the number of UK-based games studios is increasing, a fact that surely spells good news for the UK games industry, those studios are actually getting smaller in size.

Does size matter?

According to TIGA CEO, Dr Richard Wilson, smaller studios must be on their toes if they hope to survive in the highly competitive gaming space as their size will make them vulnerable.

“In Alice in Wonderland fashion, the UK games development and digital publishing sector has achieved the apparently impossible feat of expanding and shrinking at the same time," explained Wilson.

"On the one hand, the number of studios expanded from 448 in 2012 to 620 in 2013. On the other hand, the proportion of studios with more than five or personnel shrunk from 50 per cent to 41 per cent over the same period.

"This is a direct consequence of the UK games’ industry increasing focus on mobile as the primary games platform.

“The surge in start-up studios is encouraging, but many of these will be vulnerable because of their size."


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What do you call someone who has an unhealthy obsession with video games and Sean Bean? That'd be a 'Chris Kerr'. Chris is one of those deluded souls who actually believes that one day Sean Bean will survive a movie. Poor guy.