The BFI Innovation Challenge Fund has announced the first four projects to receive funding towards creating solutions which tackle the UK screen sector’s most critical challenges – including a project supported by Scotland’s Games Jobs Live.
The area of focus for the fund’s first round is the UK video games industry which is facing a range of challenges alongside a rapid pace of change.
The fund’s first awards will provide £510,000 of National Lottery funding to four innovative projects addressing two specific challenges:
- Develop transformative solutions to collect and publish useful open data for the UK video games industry
- Developing new tools, technology or approaches to address the barriers facing emerging under-represented developers and support them in bringing products to market.
The supported projects are:
Into Games CIC – The Games Insights Database
Three partners will create the Games Insights Database (GIDB), a new UK-wide freely accessible digital data platform for video games. The partnership comprises Into Games, which has a track record in building resource hubs; Games Jobs Live, which delivers workforce updates for the sector; and learning designers/researchers Birds Eye View. The database will support independent games organisations to access more accurate and up to date information around workforce, skills and salary benchmarking
and funding availability, helping them to thrive. Qualitative and quantitative research will be cross-referenced and aggregated with workforce representatives.
OKRE: Opening Knowledge across Research and Entertainment – UK Video Games Econometrics
Partners OKRE and UKIE are being supported to undertake an initial scoping study to gather insights capturing the economic, social and cultural value of the UK video games sector. This work is innovative as it will build a comprehensive picture of the sector, collating data to articulate its value, as never captured before. As a vital stepping stone towards a full econometrics report, this data will have the potential to unlock significant additional funding and support through more effective advocacy.
Code Coven – Aurora
Aurora is a groundbreaking business development accelerator and agency designed to empower underrepresented game developers. This initiative will empower studios to secure critical funding while retaining creative control by building their skills and knowledge in business development and games financing. Code Coven will also provide comprehensive support by championing these studios and facilitating connections with publishers and investors, allowing studios to focus on what they do best; developing games. With a proven track record of delivering programmes that support underrepresented developers, Code Coven continues this legacy with Aurora — helping developers bridge the funding gap and navigate the challenging deal-making landscape.
Film London – Access to Market: Self-Publishing Toolkit
This project led by Games London, as a branch of Film London, will help UK-based emergent video game developers from under-represented backgrounds to get their first or second game to market through self-publishing. Video games businesses face huge barriers when developing their games without external funders or publishers. While self-publishing is a viable and potentially profitable route for many, there is a lack of shared and open knowledge available on how to navigate the variety of publishing opportunities. This is particularly the case for new companies and developers from under-represented backgrounds who do not always have immediate access to professional networks, community knowledge or documentation. Through this two-year project, a group of up to 12 independent games companies will focus on business development workshops around self-publishing. Insights from these workshops will then be developed into a free digital toolkit available to the whole sector.
Rishi Coupland, BFI Director of Research and Industry Innovation, said:
We’re thrilled to be backing these four projects, which propose innovative approaches to a range of challenges facing the UK’s video games industry. The Games Insights Database sets out to unlock valuable insights to support the work of independent studios and developers; the UK Video Games Econometrics project aims to strengthen the evidence base for the economic, social and cultural value of the sector; and Project Aurora and the Access to Market: Self-Publishing Toolkit will establish new ways of supporting emerging under-represented developers, helping them navigate the complex process of bringing games to market. Together, these projects promise to deliver further creative and commercial success for the video games industry, through a focus on data, insights, market access and diversity.
The BFI Innovation Challenge Fund
As part of the BFI’s National Lottery Funding Plan, 2023-2026, seeks to support new solutions to the UK screen sector’s most critical challenges. Between 2024 and 2026, up to £1.8 million will be distributed across up to six challenges, to help not-for-profit organisations to innovate, developing new approaches to persistent problems, whilst also gaining insights that benefit the UK video games industry.
During the stakeholder consultation for the BFI’s 10-year Screen Culture 2033 strategy and the BFI National Lottery Strategy, the BFI heard from UK video games developers about the challenges facing the industry and subsequently it has established an on-going video games working group.
The fund’s second call for innovation projects seeks to support moving image archives in the UK to develop skills and AI literacy across the sector by experimenting with new AI-based approaches and disseminating the learning from this. It aims to build capacity, enabling archives to access some of the benefits, and address some of the challenges and opportunities presented by this new technology.
Full information and guidelines on making an application to the BFI Innovation Challenge Fund can downloaded here.