When it comes to the UK, cities established in the gaming industry don’t roll off the tongue like New York (Atari, 2K Sports, Riot) and San Francisco, home of EA Games and Pokémon Go developer Niantic. Three northern cities – Derby, Wakefield, and Edinburgh – brought us Tomb Raider, Worms, and Grand Theft Auto, with London hosting a handful of foreign devs, like Capcom, Take-Two, and Sega.
Until recently, Brighton didn’t get a look in.
Yet the south coast city has been tipped as a “major player” in the gaming industry since a BBC article declared it in December 2023 – a good seven months ago. Journalist Will Freeman claimed the “multidisciplinary” nature of video games and Brighton’s commitment to creative diversity meant the city had a natural advantage over other British cities.
Put another way, both Brighton and video gaming are blessed with the artists, musicians, coders, and acting talents required for such a complex field.
The appearance of the Develop Conference, held at the Doubletree by Hilton Brighton Metropole this year, has added another string to the city’s gaming bow. The event discusses themes like design, accessibility, art, and gaming as a business through the lens of a developer.
Develop claims that 5,225 people attended the 2024 renewal of the occasion between 8-10 July, which featured representatives from Unity, Rocksteady Studios, Epic Games, and Larian Studios, among others.
Of course, Brighton’s gaming industry is built on more than console and PC titles. The city has casinos that have made moves into the digital space. Genting Casino at 6-8 Preston Street is part of an operator that has its casino welcome bonus featured on the Free Bets website, alongside Coral, owner of Brighton and Hove Greyhound Stadium.
IO Interactive
Much of Brighton’s claim to interactive fame comes from the company Electric Square of – fittingly – 1 Market Square. Having worked on projects with Blizzard Entertainment, Apple Arcade, Ubisoft, and Microsoft’s Xbox brand, counting Diablo IV and Battlefield 2042 among their jobs to date, Electric Square has a footprint far larger than other games companies in Brighton.
Ukie, the country’s representative in the gaming industry, revealed in early 2023 that Brighton is one of the more sizeable “games city clusters” in the UK, with 72 local businesses. Brighton Pavilion, along with Guildford, Warwick, and Leamington, serve as hubs for games development outside London, which has areas occupying the top four positions on Ukie’s list.
So much for Derby and Wakefield.
Responding to the report from Will Freeman, earlier, the Screen and Film School in Brighton offered some rather different figures to Ukie – 22 games businesses – but suggested the arrival of Hitman dev IO Interactive in 2023 could be the catalyst for more investment in Brighton’s gaming sector. IO Interactive is a $92.4m-earning studio operating out of Copenhagen and Barcelona.
A Record Low
So, where does Brighton’s budding games industry go from here? Continuing with news from the Screen and Film School, this September sees the launch of three degrees in Creative Technology, namely, Game Technology, Games Design and Development, and Games Art and Technology. Planners have already installed a new space to accommodate students on the course(s).
The University of Brighton has been talking about games “research” and its importance for the last five years, noting in 2019 that the hobby offers routes to other important fields, like health and social care. The idea of using games for good causes isn’t a new one. Project Discovery in MMO sci-fi EVE has helped scientists find distant planets in real life.
There’s a catch, though. Brighton’s newfound interest in video gaming comes when the industry is in crisis. Yahoo! News indicates that roles in UK gaming hit a record low in March, following a culling of jobs around the world. This involves exactly the type of talent the Screen and Film School tries to cultivate.
Overall, the same source claims that 8,500 jobs went worldwide in 2022, followed by another 10,500 in 2023. Between January and April of this year, 8,000 roles disappeared.
Brighton and the studios in the city’s midst (Creative Assembly, of Total War fame, resides to the north in Horsham) need to hope that this is just a course correction rather than a crash the scale of 1983.
