Industry Practice: Labour market information + Equality, diversity and inclusion

 Industry Practice: Labour market information

This week we started by looking at the labour market - the supply of and demand for labour in an economy. We looked at several different charts highlighting the growth of the games economy globally and in the UK too. 
I looked into some of the most recent analysis into the UK Games Industry. The first website I looked at was Newzoo, with an article titled Key Insights into UK Gamers | Newzoo Gamer Insights Report (Newzoo 2022), which shows off different aspects of the UK game industry. Firstly, the United Kingdom was the world's sixth largest market judged by game revenues alone as recently as 2022. with nearly "three quarters of the UK online population being game enthusiasts."

A blog from Newzoo titled These video games sold the most units in the US and UK in 2023 | Newzoo data spotlight (Max Otten 2024) highlights which games sold the best in 2023. Fortnite (Epic Games 2017) had the most most monthly average users, which can be attributed to the fact any age can play it and it is free.

Moving onto the top 10 pc and console games in the US and the UK based off of units sold, we can see that every game here is a part of an existing mainstream franchise. The two main outliers here are Hogwarts Legacy (Avalanche Software 2023), and Baldur's Gate 3 (Larian Studios 2023), which is a hit sequel to the previous much older and smaller scale games. Baldur's Gate 3 (Larian Studios 2023) is the main game to focus on here, with its success unprecedented and attributed to the very high quality and critical success of the game.


After this, I looked at The UK Games Industry Map (Ukie) to see opportunities more local to where I live to start off with. admittedly I have not given it much thought, but looking at the map for Leicester, I can see that there is a lot of games companies there with the majority being developers. The standout company is Kasedo Games, which are publishers to the Rise of Industry games and other simulation and strategy games. This is something to consider if I want to go down this avenue of art mainly being for environments.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

We also looked at ethical considerations and diversity within the games industry. For example, a recent estimate of the percentage of heterosexual people in the adult population is over 93%, whereas the games industry only has 76%. Bisexual people make up 12% of people working in games, but only 1.1% of the adult population.

Studies like these show how much more inclusive the games industry is, and the considerations we will take going forward as a studio to be inclusive with how we address mental health in our game. 

Newzoo show some percentages around the diversity of gamers in the blog titled Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Games: Gamers Want Less Toxicity in Games and Want Publishers to Take a Stance (Minh Tue Le Ngoc 2022), showing that in 2022, 13% of UK gamers identified as LGBTQIA+, 9% identified as having a disability, with mental health being most reported, and that 15% are ethnic minorities.

In terms of our game, we have a colourful aesthetic with a strong reliance on exaggerated, creative characters to highlight different struggles in peoples daily lives, which can be inclusive to all groups of people. And since a lot of these struggles can be experiences that someone might have to deal with, we are trying to take the most care to be inclusive of all groups and showcase the mental health related struggles that people deal with, not the people themselves. One thing we may discuss is removing the human names in order to strip the characters of any features that may make the audience feel less included and validated.




References: 
Epic Games. 2017. Fortnite [Video Game]. All Platforms. North Carolina, United States. Available at: https://www.fortnite.com/?lang=en-US [Accessed 15 November 2024].

Avalanche Software, 2023. Hogwarts Legacy [Video Game]. All Platforms. Burbank, CA, United States. Available at: https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-gb [Accessed 15 November 2024].

Larian Studios, 2023. Baldur's Gate 3 [Video Game]. All Platforms. Ghent, Belgium. Available at: https://baldursgate3.game/ [Accessed 15 November 2024].

Games Map UK. Games Map UK [Website] Available at: https://map.gamesmap.uk/?activities=developer&categories=games-company#viewport=%7B%22zoom%22%3A12%2C%22latitude%22%3A52.63%2C%22longitude%22%3A-1.143%2C%22bearing%22%3A0%2C%22pitch%22%3A0%7D [Accessed 15 November 2024].

Newzoo, 2022.  Key insights into UK gamers – Newzoo Gamer Insights Report. [Website] Available at: https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/key-insights-into-uk-gamers-newzoo-gamer-insights-report [Accessed 15 November 2024].

Newzoo, 2023. These video games sold the most units in the US and UK in 2023 – Newzoo Data Spotlight. [Website]  Available at: https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/these-video-games-sold-the-most-units-in-the-us-and-uk-in-2023-newzoo-data-spotlight [Accessed 15 November 2024].

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