UK games industry still predominantly young, white, and male
Marie Dealessandri
Features Editor
Thursday 10th March 2022
UKIE
At a glance:
Trade body UKIE has published its second UK Games Industry Census, and found that industry workers in the country still remain overwhelmingly young, white, and male, much like it noted in 2020.
The census, written by Dr Mark Taylor, senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, is based on responses from over 3,600 people working in the UK games industry, collected in autumn 2021. This is up from 3,200 respondents in 2020 and UKIE's first industry census, and represents around 15% of the country's games workforce.
The report spans a wide array of statistics, including the evolution of the workforce's demographics, attitudes towards the workplace, the impact of the pandemic, mental health, and more.
Looking at demographics, the stats haven't changed much compared to 2020. A majority (61%) of the games workers who took part in the survey were 35 or younger, compared to around 66% in 2020. The games industry is much younger than the overall UK workforce, with only 33% of the UK workforce being 35 or younger.
When identifying their ethnic group, 66% of the respondents said White British and 24% chose 'White Other'. 2% selected Mixed/multiple ethnic groups, 2% Black, 5% Asian, and 2% other ethnic groups.
"Together, this means that the percentage of people working in games whose ethnicity is either Mixed/multiple, Black, Asian, or Other is lower than the equivalent figure in the working-age population, which is 14.4%," Dr Mark Taylor noted.
This didn't represent a significant evolution compared to 2020, where around 10% of the UK games industry workforce were non-white.
Looking at nationalities, 71% of the UK games industry workforce is British, 20% comes
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