Our Definition of the Interactive Media and Computer Games Industries
Our definition:
We have defined four broad sector constituents. It should be noted that these do overlap to some extent and individual organisations may fall into more than one category:
- Creators: those businesses, organisations, departments and individuals that create interactive media products as their primary activity;
- Enablers: those businesses that provide infrastructure, technologies or services to support the creation and deployment of interactive media products;
- Clients: those organisations or departments that commission or use interactive media products as part of a wider set of activities (where those organisations have in-house interactive media departments or divisions, we would consider those departments to fall into the 'creators' category above); and
- End-users: the individuals who ultimately purchase or experience interactive media products.
At this stage we are focussing principally on businesses, departments and individuals in the 'creators' category, and have defined our constituency as “those who are directly involved in the creation of interactive products that are experienced on digital media platforms by end-users.”
Who are we talking about?
It is important to recognise that the interactive media sector includes many different types of business, some of which will straddle two or all of the constituents defined above. Interactive media businesses may be:
- Companies – with interactive media as their primary focus, many of which are small or micro businesses;
- Departments – within larger organisations, government and public sector agencies, whose primary business may not necessarily be interactive media;
- Individuals – principally freelancers, who account for 11% of the workforce in electronic games, and 16-17% in web and internet and offline multimedia .
Broadly speaking, we are talking about:
- Web sites, intranets and extranets;
- Multimedia CD-ROMs, DVDs and kiosks;
- Computer games;
- Interactive elements to accompany linear television programmes ('enhanced TV');
- Fully-interactive television programmes ;
- Interactive elements for video DVDs;
- Interactive elements for use within web sites;
- Interactive content for mobile devices.
These may overlap or be used in combination – for example, an interactive element for use within a web site may be a game. This list of product types is not exhaustive and is likely to change over time.
What do we mean by 'platforms'?
The range of digital media platforms on which interactive products can be experienced is constantly evolving.
In broad terms, though, they fall into four overlapping categories. These should be thought of as 'content platforms', rather than technical ones. Each is typically associated with one or more delivery platforms, which may apply to several content platforms and may change over time:
Figure 1: Content and technical platforms
- Web & Internet content: delivered to desktop computers, mobile devices, kiosks, or TVs via set-top boxes, broadband, wireless, dial-up.
- Interactive Television content: delivered via set-top-boxes or integrated digital TVs.
- Computer Games: delivered to desktop computers, TVs, consoles or mobile devices via CD-Rom, DVD, cartridge or on-line.
- Off-line multimedia content: delivered to desktop computers, kiosks or TVs via CD-Rom, DVD or other magneto-optical media.
In particular, it should be noted that, while the Computer Games sub-sector is largely driven by the exploitation of content through intellectual property rights, the Web & Internet sub-sector is primarily service-based. The Interactive Television and Multimedia sub-sectors tend to involve elements of both service provision and content exploitation.
What exactly does the interactive media sector do?
In high-level terms, the sector's activities can be broadly grouped under these headings:
- Business – this includes requirements analysis, strategy and concept development, product specification, project management, account handling and marketing;
- Content – this includes editorial, script and copy writing, and asset creation and preparation;
- Design – this should be seen in its broadest sense and includes information architecture, technical specification and graphic and interface design, audio design, usability and user interfaces, game-play, environments and functionality;
- Technology – this includes game engines, site building, back-end applications and the implementation of payment systems and security;
- Sustainability – this includes localisation, search engine optimisation, quality assurance, usability testing and on-going maintenance.
In practice, there is considerable overlap between these headings and practitioners' roles will often straddle several. It is worth noting here that interactive media is essentially a creative industry, and all of the above activities are underpinned and linked together by an element of creativity.
The specifics of these activities are likely to change over time. For example, search engine optimisation and usability testing have gained popularity in recent years and there are numerous businesses dedicated to these specialities; however, it is suggested that there will come a time when they are recognised as being so fundamental to the product creation process that they will be treated as an integral part of content and design activities.
What is interactive media used for?
Interactive media products are used for:
- Business-to-business communications and transactions: such as e-procurement, supply-chain integration, customer relationship management and business publishing;
- Business-to-consumer communications and transactions: such as e-commerce, information and publishing;
- Consumer-to-consumer communications: such as virtual communities and on-line newsgroups;
- E-Learning: training, education and assessment.
- Entertainment: encompassing games and leisure activities;
- Government communications: such as public information, on-line services and citizen-government communications;
- Heritage and Tourism: such as museums, galleries or city walking tours.
- Internal communications: such as knowledge management, collaborative working and training;
Pulling it all together
Pulling together all of the above, the expertise provided by industry feedback at the Skills Group meetings and throughout the industry consultation, alongside the additional research conducted by Skillset, we get a picture of the interactive media industry as one that:
- Is driven by government, business and consumer commissioning/purchasing;
- Comprises companies, departments and individuals;
- Undertakes a range of fundamentally creative activities;
- Draws on and overlaps with a number of related disciplines and sectors;
- Delivers interactive products to/via a number of technical and content platforms;
- Develops products that are used for information and commerce, entertainment, and learning.
Figure 2: A picture of the interactive media industry
