It’s a common lament in gaming communities that the people with the most decision-making power over the industry—from CEOs of major studios to politicians drafting new policy—often seem the least informed on how it actually works. But beyond mentally filing such moments away as further proof that all rich people are idiots, we don’t tend to talk much about why there might be such big gaps in these people’s knowledge.
A new report released by charity OKRE and trade association UKIE suggests that there’s a huge lack of accessible data covering the games industry. “The full impact of the videogames sector is currently not well understood, not just in terms of its economic value, but particularly in relation to its wide-ranging social and cultural influence”, it claims. “As a result, decisions about and within the sector are based on a limited, partial view.”
The report itself doesn’t make for the most digestible reading, but the gist is that it argues for a more unified and comprehensive framework for games industry-related research, and proposes one that could be used going forward.
For that to actually make a difference, what we’d need next is for games companies, academic researchers, and politicians to pick it up and run with it. How likely that is to happen I’ve no idea, but it’s certainly an interesting angle of thought.
Many a time I’ve found myself annoyed with mainstream media coverage of games that seems to understand them only in terms of how much money they make (“It’s bigger than the film industry!”) but have a dreadful grasp on their cultural relevance and how players actually experience them. But if the only unified, reliable, far-reaching data about the industry that’s being put out into the wider world is about sales and share prices, maybe that’s a natural result—and maybe a different approach could further everyone’s understanding of the medium for the better.
If you’ve got the academic know-how to take it all in, the full report is freely available to read online.
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