Wired Sussex recently came out with an interesting report on the video games sector in the region. Here are the highlights and some facts…
Now bigger than movies and music combined, the video game industry generates around $160bn per year and serves an estimated worldwide audience of 2.5 billion players.
Sussex generates well over £200m of economic value each year and is projected to be worth a quarter of a billion pounds a year to the regional economy by the end of 2021.
Studios in the region are involved in creating some of the world’s biggest games: Total War, Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Fall Guys, the LEGO series and more.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport suggested that each individual employed in games in the UK generates an average of £83,800 in value per annum.
There are at least 76 companies producing digital games in Sussex. The majority (62) are small independents or start-ups employing less than 20 staff. There are 14 larger studios, and they account for 85% of the 2,500 people who work for games companies.
Two companies, Creative Assembly (which produces the Total War series) and Unity (which provides the tech underpinning a vast number of popular games from Pokemon Go to Assassin’s Creed), account for over one third of the total employment in the Sussex sector.
Local studios build for the full range of platforms, with content created for mobile, desktop, AR, VR and consoles. 33% of the studios make PC-based games, and 16% create games that cover all platforms. AR and VR games are also developing as a new (but growing) part of the sector.
Digital gaming companies can be found across Sussex however there is a very significant cluster in Brighton & Hove, the largest urban centre in the region. A significant and notable exception is Creative Assembly, who are based in Horsham.
