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Declan Cassidy is the CEO of Into Games
“I’m scared for the future of games,” says Chris Goodyear. “It could end up going the way that theatre has, and become a very privileged thing.”
At one of the UK’s largest conferences for video game developers, social class was on the agenda.
The concern raised by Chris, a producer working to highlight accessibility barriers in the industry, is one that some in the sector feel has gone unappreciated for too long.
This year, Develop:Brighton featured its first meet-up dedicated to working-class and low-income people in the UK games industry.
The event was put on by the non-profit organisation Into Games.
Its boss Declan Cassidy set the body up six years ago to try to help “underrepresented people more broadly” in the industry.
This narrowed to focus solely on social mobility, as he said they realised “there weren’t really any other champions” in that area.
In 2024 Into Games released a report which found there was a “really high number of people in working-class and low-income backgrounds coming through existing game educational pathways,” Declan said.
But not many of them actually completed that journey and got jobs.
“They’re being failed at the last hurdle,” he added.
Other
Over 5,000 games industry professionals attend Develop:Brighton each year
The Into Games report highlighted barriers such as location, access to finance, reduced cultural capital and lack of networks which prevented people from lower socio-economic backgrounds from breaking into the industry.
It found that 59% of participants said they had been made to feel “othered” at some point in their career.
Will Luton, the founder of Village Studio Games, attended the event in Brighton and said he had “felt overt discrimination” due to his class.
He added he often found himself having to “mask” or “rework” the way he talked so he didn’t “give away” where he was from.
Will argued that those like himself who had made it into the industry had a part to play in highlighting the problem, rather than suggesting that just because “they were in” the industry, it suddenly “wasn’t an issue”.
The report also suggested the gaming sector had a smaller proportion of people coming from lower socio-economic backgrounds (13%) compared to film and TV (29%) or music and visual arts (22%).
Nick Poole, head of games industry body Ukie, believed that while the talent was available, the “opportunity wasn’t”.
“If you’re going to tell real stories, people who are young, gifted and broke need to be able to find their way into the industry,” Nick said.
‘Huge’ benefits for studios
Declan Cassidy hopes Into Games’ approach can help those from working class backgrounds across the UK find their place within a precarious sector, which in recent years has seen thousands of jobs lost across the globe.
The organisation plans to focus support on six areas – Birmingham, Brighton, Dundee, London, Manchester and Tees Valley – in the next five years.
The support will include targeting outreach in schools, paid internships and government-funded training, with the group stating that over 100 game studios have confirmed they will take on working-class talent through their programmes in 2025 and 2026.
“By 2030, our aim is to be increasing the number of people from working-class backgrounds in the UK games industry by a factor of 50%,” Declan said.
The benefit could be “huge for studios,” he added.