Liverpool: UK capital of computer games
Mark Butler
In a significant piece of regional business news, global consumer technology giant Sony have announced their acquisition of Liverpool-based games studio, Firesprite (8th Sept 2021). Which raises the question, should we treat this development with excitement or an impending sense of doom? We’ve been here before…
Sony, of course, already has a presence in the city, dating back to 1993 when it bought out Psygnosis, probably the region’s most well-known developer, notable for scoring gaming hits on the Atari and Amega ST systems. Under Sony’s wing, but still retaining a degree of independence, the same team brought us the seminal Wipeout series of games for the PlayStation. Eventually, Psygnosis were rebranded as part of SCE Worldwide Studios.
In 2012 though, Sony closed their Liverpool studio, retaining studios instead in the South East, although they did thankfully maintain a presence at Wavertree Technology Park, managing business areas like testing, validation and localisation for games produced elsewhere. This meant it remained a significant local employer with around 500 staff. But what was going to happen to all the game-makers? Fortunately, after the closure of Sony’s Liverpool studio, there was no desire to give up. Five of its former employees including Managing Director Graeme Ankers and Lee Carus as Art Director, immediately banded together to found Firesprite and it has done rather well. Since launching, the company has grown rapidly and now employs 250 people, making it a significant city centre tech industry employer. Yet, unless you were paying close attention, you could be forgiven for having missed it. Firesprite’s success seems to have been by and large missed by local politicians and media.
Now that things have come full circle and Sony has acquired Firesprite, this could potentially be a worry for the local digital sector. Beyond Liverpool, Sony has form for closing studios, shutting down Evolution Studios in Runcorn in 2016, Guerilla Cambridge in 2017 and Sony’s own Manchester studio in 2020. Games can be a sink or swim business. Could history once again repeat itself and the jobs at Firesprite move elsewhere? Hopefully not and the signs so far are good, with seemingly several new games in the pipeline for Firesprite under Sony. A more positive narrative is that this combined business of Sony’s existing operations in the city and Firesprite means Sony Interactive Entertainment now employs approximately 750 people in Liverpool, split between Sony’s new city centre office in the former Liverpool Echo building and Firesprite’s Fleet Street office. This at a stroke makes Sony one of the larger employers in the city centre and one of the largest tech employers in the region. Arguably it puts Liverpool at the heart of Sony’s European interactive entertainment business. This is something local leaders and the press should be shouting from the rooftops about.
It’s not so great a leap to imagine the whole operation combined into the former Liverpool Echo complex, which still has empty space, including the old print hall which, with enough investment and creative thinking, could be converted into a bold games studio complex. Imagine seeing SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT EUROPE lit up in big illuminated letters from your ship on the Mersey. That would be a big sign, pun intended, that Liverpool is a city of the future.
Interactive entertainment is one of Liverpool’s economic success stories… but you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a passing mention of it in local economic development documents.
It’s not all about Sony though by any means. Another major studio, Lucid Games, employs around 150 people in its Baltic Triangle base and there are a variety of other interactive entertainment firms of various sizes and specialisms in the region including Milky Tea, Ripstone, Wushu, Draw & Code, Cosmonaut and Starship amongst others. One of the few big foreign direct investment successes for Liverpool in recent years was Avalanche Studios of Sweden opening a Liverpool studio in 2020 to go with its existing operations in Stockholm, Malmo and New York.
So interactive entertainment really is one of Liverpool’s economic successes stories and a major unique selling point. The city is one of only a relatively small number of locations in the UK that can be said to be a centre for the industry. Yet, despite this decades-long strength in the gaming sector, local authorities seem to have done little to promote it over the years. This is especially strange for a high growth industry which creates well paid, rewarding (if sometimes intense) creative jobs, and one with relatively low barriers to entry for young trainees. That said, one important public investment in the sector locally has been The Studio School in Baltic Triangle, which helps prep young people to enter the industry.
More could be done though. But first our city leaders and those organisations responsible for driving investment into the City Region need to step up and recognise the golden opportunity that this sector represents. Despite the fact that the sector is already successful and growing, you would be hard-pressed to find anything more than a passing mention of it in local economic development documents, let alone on front pages where it deserves to be. Interactive entertainment should be just as high a priority for the region as the port and tourism. The games industry is a credit to the region and for that we should thank those working within it. The time is now for more public sector effort to back this up.
Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle district
At the moment, Liverpool City Council’s recent draft cultural strategy barely even mentions games, while it mentions the film industry repeatedly. The local Liverpool City Region Growth Hub makes a better stab at things with its LCR Tech initiative promoting the sector, yet it seems interactive entertainment has been siloed within ‘tech’ rather than being considered as one of the City Region’s cultural as well as technological strengths. Given that the walls between film, games, events, online content and other forms of art, culture and entertainment are collapsing rapidly, this seems short-sighted. Interactive entertainment is as much as part of the Liverpool City Region ‘culture’ sector as the film industry. I would argue more so, as the creative leadership of these games is in Liverpool, whereas the majority of filming in Liverpool is location shooting for projects led from elsewhere. Why doesn’t the Liverpool Film Office expand its remit to all forms of digital entertainment, with some new game sector experienced staff recruited to help grow the industry locally? Such an investment would pay for itself very quickly many times over.
We should shout about the success of this sector in the region more, but more also needs to be done to ensure Liverpool doesn’t lose its competitive advantage in this global industry. The city has already lost some of its advantage in the much more lauded film sector. Despite the city being one of the most filmed in the UK for decades, it is now far behind other areas in the development of film studios. In the time Liverpool has been discussing developing Littlewoods Studios, numerous film studio projects have sprung up across the UK, some of them even going from planning to fully opening in that time. Belfast alone has had permanent, large-scale sound studios for over ten years and is expanding aggressively, whereas Liverpool is yet to complete its ‘pop up’ Depot film studios and with no start date yet announced for the main Littlewoods project.
In contrast, the games industry in Liverpool is already up and running, innovating and growing as one of the biggest clusters of its kind in the UK. Today, concepts for digital interactive experiences created and developed by professionals in Liverpool are being enjoyed worldwide. Yet, it would be easy enough to lose this advantage without the right support and promotion. A few years ago, the sector came fairly close to exiting the city when the two largest studios (Sony and Bizarre Creations) pulled down the shutters in quick succession. Contributors to Liverpolitan have spoken to games industry insiders in years past, who felt the region’s authorities were not then placing enough importance on supporting the sector, taking it for granted, while at the same time Greater Manchester was forging ahead developing MediaCityUK and attracting digital investment globally.
Perhaps things are better now, since the creation of the City Region Combined Authority. Yet even there, the sector struggles to receive the same sort of attention as other ‘designated economic growth areas’ such as green energy, modular construction and advanced manufacturing. While these are all important sectors, the region needs to face up to the fact that, in those sectors, we’re up against equally strong, if not stronger, offers from other areas like Yorkshire and the North East. Yet the Liverpool City Region has a real competitive advantage in interactive entertainment arguably now unmatched in the UK outside of London and its satellite, Guildford. Aside from the well paid employment and the training and advancement opportunities the sector offers for local young people, the opportunity for further re-purposing of unused former industrial space in the city – always popular for studios – is another benefit. Not to mention the fact that, while the sector may not attract tourists, games are globally cool and a brilliant marketing opportunity for the city that is contemporary rather than historic.
LCR has a golden opportunity with interactive entertainment and it cannot afford to miss this chance again.
Make no mistake, high growth in this area could be transformative for the region. You only have to look at Montreal, Canada for an example. In the 1990s, Montreal was struggling from decline in its manufacturing industries. (sound familiar?) Ubisoft was attracted to open the first real games studio in the region in an old industrial building in the city, starting with 50 employees in 1997. At the time, a much smaller operation than Sony in Liverpool.
From that small beginning, Ubisoft Montreal now employs 3,500 people and is one of the largest games studios in the world. Many other studios have followed their lead to set up shop in the region including Electronic Arts, Eidos Interactive, THQ and Warner Bros. This was achieved by strong public and private collaboration, notably with also significant national support from the Canadian Government. Montreal is now the fifth largest games industry city in the world and the sector has spilled out into the wider region, now employing around 11,000 people across Quebec. Imagine if the games industry in Liverpool in the 1990s had been nurtured in the same way? Oh what could have been…
Similarly, in Malmo, Sweden, a former shipbuilding city which had experienced severe economic decline (sound familiar?), the growth of a games industry has also had a huge impact. Malmo is now home to over 30 studios, has its own cross-city sector trade organisation, Game City, and training institution, Game Assembly. Malmo pitches itself as the European capital of games.
Why shouldn’t the Liverpool City Region have the same level of ambition with this sector? LCR has a golden opportunity with interactive entertainment and it cannot afford to miss this chance again. So we’re laying down a challenge to our regional leaders: prioritise digital interactive entertainment in terms of publicity, grant funding, space allocation, development support and political will. This is a call for local authorities to work hand-in-hand with the region’s interactive entertainment sector and throw their shoulders fully behind Liverpool as the UK capital of games!