Martyn McLaughlin: Ignorance of Scots gaming sector

Rockstar North's global phenomenon Grand Theft Auto V has grabbed the headlines. Picture: Contributed

If the committee of a parliamentary inquiry designed to champion Scotland’s film industry included politicians who admitted they had never set foot in a cinema, what might the response be? Charges of ignorance, perhaps, with accusations of philistinism and questions over whether they were best suited to such a vital role? What if the inquiry’s remit included supporting the gaming industry, a field in which Scotland has the potential to be world leading? The answer, it seems, is silence.

Tomorrow, members of the Scottish Parliament’s economy, energy and tourism committee will meet in private to consider a draft report of its inquiry into the economic impact of the creative industries. The four month-long endeavour hopes to find way to sustainably grow the nation’s television, film and gaming sectors. The latter has long been overlooked and misinterpreted. It seems unlikely that will change.

During one of the committee’s hearings, one MSP confessed that he had never played a video game. On another occasion, the convener, Murdo Fraser, suggested Scotland’s games firms enjoy “quite an optimistic outlook” while television faces “challenges” and the film sector “serious issues.” It might as well serve as an executive summary of the blueprint to come: leave the gamesmakers to it and focus on what we know about.

The film and TV lobbyists shout loudest and are politically savvy, but ignoring gaming would be an opportunity squandered. Scotland is home to some of the world’s most innovative and successful creative companies, but wider appreciation of how their skills and transformative technologies might be applied is wanting on account of the misunderstood medium in which they work.

Amid the hoaried old narrative which paints gaming as a reductive, repetitive orgy of simulated sadism, we hear little of the original ideas emerging from small Scottish studios, such as 9.03m, a tender and poetic exploration of grief revolving around the 2011 Japanese tsunami and an example of how this ubiquitous marriage of media can tell new stories and stimulate strong emotional experiences.

Instead, headlines focus on Rockstar North, neighbours of the parliament and a company that has become a metonym for the Scottish industry. The attention is understandable; its most recent game, Grand Theft Auto V, has shipped more than 45 million copies, becoming the fastest selling entertainment product of all time.

Rockstar is the lauded flagbearer, but its resounding success is the exception, not the rule, and the endless focus on its achievements does a disservice to the work going on elsewhere. How many people know that there are 85 games firms across Scotland, or that last year they contributed £99 million to UK GDP and provided the Treasury with £41m in direct and indirect tax revenues?

But still they need a helping hand. A while back, 9.03m’s creator, Karl Inglott, told me how he produced it while juggling a full time job, with no funding available. His creation may not have been a commercial juggernaut but its concept and execution is indicative of a dormant ambition that must be nurtured as part of an overhaul of how the Scottish Government and its executive agencies view games.

A few years ago, when Creative England were busy appointing a dedicated head of games, Creative Scotland commissioned an economic impact survey in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise into the games sector. Its desultory conclusions suggested the gross value to Scotland’s economy stood at precisely zero, when in reality the figure is somewhere north of £1 billion.

The misinformation did little to inspire confidence, evincing a haphazard, heedless approach to the trade. If Creative Scotland’s current decade-long plan is any guide, the ship has yet to be turned around. The 57-page strategy document mentions the word “game” twice, with an absence of substantive policy proposals. Games remain the black sheep of a family where the arts and screen industries are seen as the breadwinners. As one developer told me recently: “It feels like you’re on the outside looking in.”

Comparing one artistic medium with another can be arbitrary, but it is worth recalling how public money is funnelled towards cultural products deemed to tick the right boxes. Take the film Brave, which enjoyed £7m in marketing funding from the Scottish Government and VisitScotland, all so our tourism mandarins could dry clean their trews and form a welcoming parade for Disney, a multinational whose recently exposed accounting practices in Luxembourg make Scrooge McDuck look like a philanthropist.

A handful of organisations do commendable work in assisting Scotland’s games producers, such as Abertay and Glasgow Caledonian Universities and the Scottish Games Network, but confusion surrounds the role of myriad other bodies, hubs, panels and quangoes, each of whom wields an indeterminate degree of influence. They include: AmbITion; Arts & Business Scotland; Creative Clyde; Creative Culture Scotland; Creative Loop; Creative Skillset; IdeaScotland; Institute for the Creative Industries; Interactive Scotland; and New Media Scotland. There are nearly as many agencies as games being made.

Developers have scant idea who best to contact in the hope of securing even a fraction of Brave’s pot of gold and without a unifying framework the efficacy of these bodies is diminished. Scotland will continue to lag behind the Finns, where government agencies like Tekes and Invest in Finland draw in tens of millions of pounds in venture capital to aid start-ups.

Growing our nascent games industry requires ingenuity, commitment and lucid understanding. We don’t need every MSP to be able to make a flawless speedrun in Sonic the Hedgehog 4, but it might be advantageous if they know what they are talking about.