UK games industry fundamentally misunderstood, new report calls for unified research framework

UKIE and entertainment charity OKRE have developed a framework to help the UK games industry maximise its economic and social value.

The Building a Unified Framework for the UK Video Games Impacts report offers a foundation for researchers and policymakers to demonstrate the industry’s value to government and investors.

UKIE and OKRE state that the current understanding of games is fundamentally misunderstood and does not reflect the medium’s actual impact, which limits investment, policy support, and growth.

The findings are supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the BFI Innovation Challenge Fund. The report serves as an initial step toward a shared evidence base for the sector.

The framework uses a version of the Theory of Change model to connect planned actions with long-term goals.

The report explains how games affect areas beyond entertainment, like healthcare, education, and culture, including fashion, music, film, and TV. It introduces early ideas for measuring social impact in three areas: Culture & Society, Health & Wellbeing, and Education & Learning.

The framework’s guiding principles remain neutral, capturing both existing evidence and hypotheses without assessing impacts as positive or negative.

The report identifies three anchor points for games, platforms, and technology: production or commodification, playing or experiencing games, and third-party use or exploitation. The third area is highlighted as growing and under-researched.

The study broadens sector definitions to include more organisations in the supply chain. It covers over 50 sub-sectors and 15 overarching categories, available here.

UKIE and OKRE are calling on the games industry, government, and academia to collaborate on this framework to address identified research gaps. A survey has also been launched, inviting developers and publishers to share how they assess the impact of their work.

“This work enables us to move on to a more sophisticated framing – video games are neither inherently good nor inherently bad, they simply exist as a cultural phenomenon,” said UKIE CEO Nick Poole.

He added that research is needed to understand how this phenomenon “interacts with every aspect of daily life – from health to education, productivity to play, and digital skills to creativity.”

“Research is the games industry’s secret weapon in unlocking more support and growth,” said OKRE director Iain Dodgeon.

“Continuing to build a fuller picture of its impact will unlock decisions about games innovation, policy support, partnerships and investment. That’s why we are calling on the UK games sector to come together with academia and government and fill the crucial research gaps that our report has identified.”

Mentioned in this article