11 September 2012 – London, United Kingdom – New figures from games and interactive entertainment trade body, Ukie further undermine inaccurate Creative Scotland report in to the Scottish Games industry.
Following the highlighting by Scottishgames.net of the errors contained in Creative Scotland’s report (An Approach to the Economic Assessment of the Arts & Creative Industries in Scotland June 2012) that inaccurately stated that the Scottish games industry generated no revenue for the UK, Ukie have said that their estimated figures, generated from publicly available data and their own members, show that the Scottish games industry in Summer 2012 is made up of over 110 businesses, employs more than 500 professionals and generates at least £40million of value to the Scottish economy. Scottish studio output has generated over £1billion in revenues over the last 5 years alone.
Clearly the Industry has value.
In light of the anomalous report, Ukie has also called for better gathering and analysis of statistics for the entire UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry, particularly as the industry will need to understand the success of the incoming games tax production credit scheme from 2013. Ukie has offered to assist in any way it can to get a full and accurate representation.
Ukie has previously called for improvements to be made to official government statistics as a partner in last year’s Risky Business Report, produced by think-tank DEMOS, and now calls once again for these recommendations to be implemented.
The Risky Business Report (published last October) called for:
- Government to consult the sector to establish where the current Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes system, currently used by UK and Scottish governments, is lacking and how it can be improved.
- Government should press for international reform of SIC through the EU and the UN to enable the system to better reflect the reality of the UK economy.
- Government should task its statistics agencies to make it easier for the ONS and external researchers using government data to track and study new and important sectors of the UK economy, including the creative industries, which are not well served by the current SIC system.
Ukie wants to work with UK and Scottish governments and other bodies jointly to provide access to data sets that can give a better picture of the UK’s games industry. Ukie has unique access to the UK boxed product market and is also working on producing data for purely digital games markets – its PC Download Chart is currently operating as a BETA and is the only chart that provides actual sales data for digital games products.
Ukie has recently also welcomed becoming part of a newly formed data group, proposed by the government’s Creative Industries Council, to look at how accurate and meaningful data can be collected for the creative industries.
Ukie CEO, Dr Jo Twist said: “The information contained in Creative Scotland report is clearly wrong. We know that Scotland is a powerhouse of games talent and businesses, which is one of the reasons we opened our Ukie Scotland office there this year. But the report did highlight a long standing issue about the quality and classification of official data for our industry.
“This is not a new issue – we called for improvement to how data was collected for the creative industries last year in the Risky Business report that we did with think tank DEMOS. But with government supporting the games sector through tax breaks and the introduction of computer science into schools, it has now never been more important to measure the size and growth of the industry, the value that it brings to UK economies and the impact that government policies have on it.”
“We know that government wants to work with industry to improve reporting and we want to help by providing access to the data sets that we own. We are also pleased to be part of the Creative Industries Council proposed data group but much more needs to be done collaboratively with all interested parties if we are to avoid further misrepresentation of the UK’s games and interactive entertainment sector. We need the data to be able to shout loud and proud.”