If you've ever played a video game, you've probably played one made in the UK. From the breath-taking creativity of Monument Valley and LittleBigPlanet, the grand strategies of Total War and Football Manager, the exhilaration of F1 and Forza, the glorious exploration of Elite, the joy of Lego and Worms to the freedom and sophistication of Grand Theft Auto and Batman, the British have a genius for making games.
We have made world-class games for nearly 40 years, but the studios that make our games face massive challenges in raising the money needed to develop games, fighting low public and media recognition of games' impact on our culture and economy, and real difficulties accessing the skills to keep our games world-class.
British games contribute well over £1 billion to the country's economy every year but government funding for the art form that is games has been negligible. Some still question whether games are even an art form. In this day and age!
Many of the most influential people in games, finance, the arts and education believe that it's high time games had a single national public agency to champion games. This new agency will address these challenges by funding the production of cultural games, backing cultural projects like games festivals and heritage, and sourcing cutting edge skills through online training.
For the petition to be delivered to Minister of State, Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Matthew Hancock MP, it needs 10,000 signatures. It already has almost 4,000 but there is still a long way to go.
So please follow this link and sign the petition yourself, and then share it will all your friends and colleagues and ask them to sign it too, and let's make the BGI a reality!
