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gross revenue from work to hire (Games Investor Consulting 2008, 13);
whereas NESTA estimates that just over half of those employed in the UK
industry are now employed by publisher/developers and most of these are
foreign owned (Bakhshi and Mateos-Garcia 2010, 6). Although the overall
numbers employed by the industry do not seem to have reduced much, and
indeed if we include mobile and interactive games they may have increased,
what we are seeing is a fear, initially articulated in the Spectrum 2000
report and again in the 2008 Oxford Economics report, that global pub-
lisher/developers will move to cheaper locations, or locations which have
greater state supports, rather than stay in the UK. Given the numbers of
foreign-owned publishers/developers in the UK this is a signifi cant and very
real fear. The restructuring Cornford discussed proceeded apace in the last
decade, and it is clear that countries like Canada, China and some East-
ern European countries are indeed cheaper cost locations compared to the
UK. Thus the global political economy of labour and national competi-
tion for mobile investment are having a signifi cant impact on the discourse
employed by local trade associations in the UK.
These reports have been used as evidence to lobby the UK government to
introduce fi nancial supports for the games industry. Throughout the report
reference is made to “subsidized territories”, the threat of global publish-
ers in the UK downsizing and moving jobs elsewhere and more explicitly
it is stated that if nothing is done “10,000 jobs could be lost in the UK”
(Oxford Economics 2008, 3). Despite the “GameUp” campaign and exten-
sive lobbying of the media and policymakers no specifi c tax breaks have
been introduced in the UK for the games industry. At various stages it
looked like the government was favourably disposed towards the idea only
for it to emerge that no action was to be taken. Instead the new UK govern-
ment announced in 2011 that it would increase research and development
tax credits for SMEs to 200 per cent, a move warmly welcomed by TIGA.
When ELSPA was rebranded UKIE in mid-2010 its mission was broad-
ened to include “promoting, nurturing and protecting the interactive enter-
tainment industry in the UK.” Its members are the who's who of global game
publishing and development including Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Activi-
sion Blizzard, EA, Disney, Warner Bros, Konami, Square Enix, Sega and
NCsoft. Most of these companies are headquartered either in the U.S. or in
Japan. Meanwhile TIGA broadened its remit from independent game devel-
opers to publisher-owned developers. Their membership is less obvious on
their website but their activities are more focused on independent and pub-
lisher/developers. Both, it would appear, are primarily occupied with lobbying
the government on behalf of the software publishers, launching manifestos
and marshalling data to show that the industry in the UK needs “support”.
Interestingly, although on its website TIGA says it focuses on “political rep-
resentation, generating media coverage and developing services”, UKIE on
its website states that it represents the industry to policymakers and has a
dedicated “property crime unit”. Briefl y in 2011 it was thought that the two
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