Scotland’s Games Strategy: Back in March and April we held workshops across the country to gather data from the whole games community and make sure that the action plan was based upon the issues, opportunities and challenges identified by games sector itself.
We held 16 in-person and online workshops at which over 1000 data points were gathered, from over 200 people, covering 11 different topics. We’re going to share all of this data with you – and give you the chance to comment and feed back into the process, to make sure the whole process is as open and collaborative as possible.
Whether you attended a workshop or not, your responses to the topics and the data captured are welcome and will be used to ensure that the Action Plan has been seen and sanity checked throughout the whole process, making sure every step has been visible and created in conjunction with the whole games community.
The Topics Discussed
The topics that were covered at all 16 workshops were:
- What are games? Where do we fit?
- How are games defined in Scotland? Do we fit in screen/tech/creative industries or ‘other’?
- Building knowledge across Government
- How do we increase knowledge and understanding – and therefore support – for games at all levels of government (national, local, etc.)?
- Education – primary/secondary/college/university/graduate outcomes
- How do we improve the education pipeline from early stage digital skills and the use of games within education, through to graduate outcomes, business creation and employability?
- Skills, training and continuing personal development (CPD)
- How do we improve skills at all levels of the games ecosystem and improve career progression, staff retention and address skills gaps created by the ongoing evolution of the industry?
- Talent, careers and hiring
- How do we improve employment and make it easier for employers to access the skills they need
- Business creation and startups
- How do we improve the pipeline for business creation, increase the sustainability of games businesses and ensure new games companies are encouraged and supported?
- Infrastructure and support
- How do we improve support for games businesses at all points of growth/scale, across the whole of Scotland?
- Funding and finance
- What funding is available to games companies? What do we need? What do we want?
- Reach – national/global
- How do we improve the profile and visibility of Scottish games and developers nationally (Scotland/UK) and globally?
- Outcomes
- What does good look like? If the Action Plan is accepted, what does the ecosystem look like in 12/24/36 months and at the end of 10 years?
- What’s Missing
- What is not currently being discussed? What needs to be a part of Scotland’s games ecosystem in the future? What would make us unique?
Scotland’s Games Strategy: See The Whole Data Set
The whole dataset from the workshops was captured in a Figma board. You can see the entire board here. All data is anonymous and colour-coded to let us identify which workshops produced which input.
What’s Next?
Over the next several days we will be sharing all of the data gathered across all 11 topics, breaking down the key opinions, data points and takeaways – and using those to create actionable recommendations for government, public sector and the industry itself.
Writing the action plan is already underway. The goal here is to directly link the data gathered, with the issues identified from previous research (including the Glasgow/Stirling University’s: Scotland’s Games Ecosystem: The State of Play: Challenges and Opportunities (2022)) and make sure everything we recommend is clear, actionable and will directly help change the understanding of and support for Scotland’s games ecosystem.
First Up – What are games? Where do they fit? This sounds simple, but it’s a fundamental part of why games remain weirdly disconnected and unsupported in Scotland.
~Brian