Quality industry information is needed, says Tiga

Tiga has issued a call to the government to fund research into the videogames industry in the UK to come up with standardised information on items such as research and development, training costs and exports values.

That would then allow videogames companies to benchmark themselves against industry averages, says the developer body, in the same way that the recent Value-Added Scoreboard does for other businesses.

"There is a paucity of good quality data on the UK video games industry," said Tiga CEO Richard Wilson. "Information such as value-added, investment on research and development, average annual expenditure on training and the value of videogames in terms of exports, for example, is thin or incomplete.

"Yet the provision of information of this kind would provide invaluable benchmarking data to UK games developers and to potential overseas investors.

"If we are to improve the competitiveness of the UK games developers then we must have better quality information. Ideally, games developers should be able to benchmark their value-added, investments in research and development, workforce development, marketing and other business activities against industry averages.

"Where possible, Tiga aims to develop this kind of information and provide it to its membership. The Government should also commission research that identifies this crucial data. This would be of great help, especially for the many smaller and medium-sized enterprises in the video games industry."

The Value-Added Scoreboard contains information on the value added by the top 800 UK companies as well as the top 750 European companies - yet provides little information about the videogames industry.