British serious games in 2008: Dead Ends and a Second Life school

Victor Keegan, writing in The Guardian on 11 December 2008, used two seminar visits and a few releases to make one argument: British developers had real strength in serious games, and the sector needed help to reach a global audience. He called on the government to support games as a growth industry, citing a worrying drift of British game skills to Canada, where subsidies had built one of the strongest game sectors in the world.

Sony Computer Entertainment had released the UK-developed LittleBigPlanet to critical acclaim, and Keegan counted it among his examples because players can learn elements of physics and other subjects in it. Ray Maguire, head of Sony Computer Entertainment UK, told the seminar that Britain had the infrastructure, the devices and a growing supply of content, yet something was still missing.

The skills argument had an earlier chapter. On 23 October 2008 the Guardian's Steve Boxer reported that a coalition of British development studios, backed by the developers' body Tiga and the publishers' body ELSPA, had started a lobbying campaign called Games Up? It asked for tax breaks for UK developers in line with those for the film industry, and for changes in universities to restore a flow of graduates with relevant skills. According to the campaign, games made in the UK between 2006 and 2008 were on track to earn £4bn in global revenues, in a global market worth £18bn and growing 9 percent a year. Ian Livingstone of Eidos said Britain had slipped from third to fourth in world game development, behind Canada.

Ollie Edgington, 17, was one of several young people who got their first full-time job on Dead Ends. In Plymouth, developer Andrew Jinman worked with media teacher Darren Towers and students to build the Second Life island. The recently established Serious Games Institute at Coventry University was named as the body watching over what could become a mass market; its director, David Wortley, hoped the work would dispel some of the social stigma around videogames.

Media Molecule's website still lists LittleBigPlanet among its games, next to Tearaway and Dreams. The October 2008 Guardian report on the Games Up? campaign is still online. The other addresses have gone quiet: trusim.com, the home of the triage trainer, no longer loads, and the LittleBigPlanet website at littlebigplanet.com does not load either, both in November 2026.