Video gaming in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has the largest video game sector in Europe. It has the second largest video game market in Europe after Germany and the sixth largest globally. The UK video game market was worth () in 2021, a 2% increase over the previous year.

Many major video game franchises are developed in the UK, including ''Grand Theft Auto'', ''Tomb Raider'', '' Burnout'', ''LittleBigPlanet'', '' Wipeout'' and ''Dirt'', making Britain the third largest producer of video game series behind Japan and the United States. The best-selling video game series made in the UK is ''Grand Theft Auto'' (primary developed by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland), which has sold over 150 million copies as of September 2013; the most recent instalment ''Grand Theft Auto V'' became the fastest-selling video game of all time by making $815.7 million (£511.8 million) in sales worldwide during the first 24 hours of the game's sale. Another major British contribution to the game industry was the ZX Spectrum home computer, released in 1982.

The organisations responsible for rating video games in the UK are the British Board of Film Classification and PEGI, the latter of which was elected to rate British games in 2009 and subsequently began doing so in July 2012.
The United Kingdom's video game industry is estimated to employ 20,000 people.

History

Early history (1950s–1960s)

The United Kingdom had been a key participant in the 18th and 19th century history of computing, in both its theoretical underpinnings (e.g. George Boole's Boolean algebra) and especially its practical application, including the first computing device. Notable figures like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace created both a fundamental computer, the mechanical-based difference engine, and a primitive programming language, respectively. As computers transitioned to electronic and digital elements in the mid-20th century, Alan Turing established the foundation of modern computer science and the concept of artificial intelligence. The UK's involvement in World War II also pushed forward advances in computing, particularly in cryptography, such as the Colossus computer, to help decipher enemy messages, all of which helped to create a widespread drive to improve computers and computing after the war, most prominently at several academic institutions, including the University of Manchester and Cambridge University. Wider use of computers for general purpose applications became more common in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1980s, British engineers spawned the now-ubiquitous, ''de facto'' reference implementation of the reduced instruction set computing paradigm, the ARM architecture family, which would play a large role as the heart of later games consoles (e.g. the Nintendo Switch) and mobile gaming.

Christopher Strachey's Draughts, completed around 1951, is the first verifiable video game to run on a general purpose computer, developed at the British National Physical Laboratory.

Early arcade video games (1970s–1980s)

Up until the 1970s, British amusement arcades typically had mechanical arcade games, electro-mechanical games and pinball machines. Arcade video games arrived with the 1973 release of ''Pong'' by Atari, Inc. ''Pong'' and other similar sports video game clones became popular in British arcades up until their popularity declined a year later in 1974, after which video games were dismissed as a fad. Atari's '' Breakout'' (1976) later drew a significant following, but enthusiasm for the game had also waned shortly after. A major breakthrough for video games came with the 1978 release of Taito's shoot 'em up game ''Space Invaders'', which began the golden age of arcade video games. In order to keep up with high demand for ''Space Invaders'', Taito licensed distribution rights to Midway Manufacturing. By 1979, ''Space Invaders'' had sold 85,000 arcade cabinets in the United Kingdom, installed across locations such as arcades, pubs and public buildings.

''Space Invaders'' was the first video game to attract political controversy when a 1981 Private Member's Bill known as the "Control of Space Invaders (and other Electronic Games) Bill", drafted by British Labour Member of Parliament (MP) George Foulkes, attempted to allow local councils to restrict the game and those like it by licensing for its " addictive properties" and for causing " deviancy". Conservative MP Michael Brown defended the game as "innocent and harmless pleasure", which he himself had enjoyed that day, and criticized the bill as an example of "Socialist beliefs in restriction and control". A motion to bring the bill before Parliament was defeated by 114 votes to 94 votes; the bill itself was never considered by Parliament.

''Space Invaders'' was followed by other hit arcade video games, including Namco's shoot 'em up ''Galaxian'' (1979) and maze game ''Pac-Man'' (1980), the scrolling shooters ''Scramble'' by Konami and '' Defender'' by Williams Electronics, Nintendo's platform game ''Donkey Kong'' (1981), and Namco's racing game ''Pole Position'' (1982) distributed by Atari. One of the earliest video game magazines, ''Computer and Video Games'', began publication in the United Kingdom in 1981.

Early home video games (early 1980s)

Some of the first generation of video game consoles like dedicated ''Pong'' consoles were imported into the UK but did not gain much traction. Home video games were popularized in the United Kingdom during 1982–1984. There was a short-lived home console market in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. The success of ''Space Invaders'' in the arcades generated demand for the Atari VCS, which had an official home version of ''Space Invaders'' released in 1980. The Atari VCS sold 125,000 units in the United Kingdom that year along with 500,000 game cartridges, becoming the best-selling console in the UK up until then. Portable LCD games also gained popularity the same year, including ''Space Invaders'' clones such as Atari's ''Galaxy Invaders'' and Casio's MG-880 calculator game, as well as the Sharp PC-1211 pocket computer sold by Tandy under the Radio Shack TRS-80 brand.

The home console market crash of 1983, whose effects primarily impacted North America, was offset in the UK by the simultaneous transition to a market dominated by microcomputers and LCD games. The switch towards microcomputers, and the more transient fad of LCD games, was already an apparent, emergent trend by the time of the crash, which, in the UK, merely accelerated an inevitable transition to microcomputers. The home computer market and concomitant domestic game production took off so rapidly during 1983 and thereafter that the UK market, in totality, not only withstood the crash but immediately began growing, albeit almost entirely in the new direction of microcomputers. Pre-dating and then becoming concurrent with the console market's troubles, the arrival of affordable home computers in the early 1980s, with graphical capabilities matching or exceeding the second-generation consoles, such as the Atari VCS, dealt a severe blow to consoles in the UK. Home computers offered significantly cheaper software compared to the more expensive console game cartridges. By 1984, computer games had overtaken both consoles and LCD games as the largest sector of the UK home video game market.

Microcomputer popularity (1980s)

Whereas the North American and Japanese home video game markets boomed with console games, the UK market for home video games was grown out of home computers (also known as microcomputers), specifically the BBC Micro from Acorn Computers in 1981, and the ZX Spectrum from Sinclair Research (alongside Sinclair's earlier ZX80 and ZX81 systems) and the Commodore 64 by Commodore International in 1982. In the early 1980s, the UK home computer game industry initially began with British programmers developing unofficial ports and clones of arcade games for home computers, followed by original computer games. The saturation of home computers immunised the UK against the effects of the North American video game crash in 1983, after which the microcomputer game market continued to grow, with significant levels of domestic game production taking place. In 1984, computer games replaced console and LCD games as the largest sector of the UK home video game market.

Computer literacy had been seen by the UK government as a key skill that Britain's children should possess to help improve the technology savvy of the nation in the future. While home computers did exist in the UK market like the Commodore PET and Apple II (both released in 1977), these were comparatively expensive for broad use across the population. The BBC
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