Known as ‘the Hollywood of video games’, Guildford is set to benefit from international recognition and investment thanks to support through the Government’s Department for International Trade (DIT).

The government will promote the gaming industry overseas in a bid to attract foreign investment through their High Potential Opportunity Programme.

Cllr Caroline Reeves, Leader of Guildford Borough Council, welcomed the announcement and said: “Guildford has over 30 years of history in the games industry and we are committed to supporting this dynamic sector in every way we can along with partners at the University of Surrey and the EM3 Local Enterprise Partnership. Our town is an epicentre for the UK games industry with over 70 studios and 1500 people – 10% of the UK games industry workforce – being directly employed in the sector. The impact of gaming technologies in other fields such as healthcare (“gamification”) is making advances here too.

“Working with the Guildford games community, including EA, Media Molecule, Playsport, Arrogant Pixel, Opozo, nDreams, Supermassive Games, we recently held our first Guildford Gaming Festival highlighting the industry in our area and providing a chance for students to meet developers and college lecturers to talk about careers.”
The UK gaming sector market is set to grow from £5.7bn in 2018 to exceed £7bn by 2021.