NEMOG: New Economic Models and Opportunities for digital Games

The digital games market is an enormous and fast-growing industry with extraordinary impact, particularly on young people and increasingly on other segments of the population. The importance of the UK games industry (3rd largest in the world) was underlined in the Chancellor's Autumn statement (5th December 2012), which confirmed substantial tax reliefs for the digital games industry, saying that "the Government will ensure that the reliefs are among the most generous in the world". Enthusiasm for digital games is underlined by a 2012 Forbes magazine article suggesting that, by the age of 21, the typical child has played 10,000 hours of digital games.

How can we harness widespread enthusiasm for digital games to contribute to advances in society and science in addition to economic impacts? For example, we can test economic theories by analysing the artificial economies in online games, or we can improve the motor skills of recovering stroke patients by using games based on motion detection devices such as the Wii controller, Kinect or simply the mobile phone.

In this proposal we will bring the UK digital games industry closer to scientists and healthcare workers to unlock the potential for scientific and social benefits in digital games. The numbers of games sold and the numbers of game hours played mean that we only need to persuade a small fraction of the games industry to consider the potential for social and scientific benefit to achieve a massive benefit for society, and potentially to start a movement that will lead to mainstream distribution of games aimed at scientific and social benefits.

In order to do this we need to understand the current state of the digital games industry, by engaging directly with games companies and with industry network associations like the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network. We have a group of 12 games companies and 9 network organisations, all of whom have pledged their support, to get us started. Then we need to build simulation models that will allow us to investigate what might happen in the future (e.g. if government policy were to encourage the development of games with scientific and social benefits).

We need to conduct research into sustainable business models for digital games, and particularly for games with scientific and social goals. These will show us how businesses can start up and grow to develop a new generation of games with the potential to improve society.

Every action in an online game, from an in-game purchase to a simple button push, generates a piece of network data. This is a truly immense source of information about player behaviours and preferences. We will explore what online data is available now and might become available in the future, investigate the issues around gathering such data, and develop new algorithms to "mine" that data to better understand game players as an avenue for making better games, societal impact and scientific research.

It is an ambitious programme, but the potential benefits if we are even partially successful could have a huge impact on children, science and wider society.

Beneficiaries of the NEMOG project will include:

Parents, Game Players and Wider Society: Large and growing numbers of people are playing digital games with unprecedented enthusiasm. The NEMOG proposal aims to increase the social and scientific value obtained through playing games, by understanding and developing appropriate business models and by mining "big data". In so doing we are tapping into enormous reserves of cognitive power. The potential benefits here are cultural (e.g. to raise awareness in important areas such as environmental change), scientific (e.g. to conduct experiments which use artificial economies to test economic theory), social (e.g. to educate) and therapeutic (e.g. to understand how we can use games to increase mobility in stroke patients).

The Digital Games Industry: NEMOG brings together members of the mainstream (recreation-oriented) digital games industry, with scientists, healthcare workers and members of the nascent scientific- and social-goal-oriented digital games industry. By doing this alongside a study of business models and environments we aim to engage entrepreneurs in this fast-moving industry, building profitable games which are more squarely aimed at achieving scientific and social goals. The data mining tools developed during NEMOG will allow increased understanding of game players, which can increase profitability of mainstream games as well as those games aimed at social and scientific goals. The digital games industry achieved a major coup in securing tax breaks in the Chancellor's December 2012 Autumn statement - so that the environment is ripe for accelerating growth in the UK and NEMOG can provide a further catalyst.

Other industries in the Digital Economy: Digital games provide an important indicator of the business direction of the broader media industries: a 2011 ESRC/IPO report highlights that "the singularity of the digitally native games sector contrasts with the relatively traditional music and television sectors and may point the way to the future." Sector analysis, predictive simulation models, new business models and data mining tools aimed at the digital games industry will likely have a broader impact in showing potential future directions for film, music, TV and online digital media industries.

Policymakers in the Digital Economy: Sector analysis, predictive models, new business models and case studies will provide new tools for our creative industry network partners to lobby government to provide an environment conducive to digital games in general, and to those aimed at scientific and social goals in particular.

Economists, Ecologists/Biologists, Computer Scientists, Media researchers and others interested in the potential for mining gameplay and purchasing data from digital games to reveal large-scale preference and behaviour information will benefit. Another related commercial area that will benefit from such understanding is sales and marketing for the wider economy, particularly as an ever-larger fraction of the UK's GDP (over 8% in 2010 and growing fast) is transacted online.

The researchers in the NEMOG consortium will become rounded generalists in business and problem analysis with an excellent understanding of the creative industries. The postdoctoral researchers (and associated PhD students) will then be of great value to the digital economy, either by continued research efforts, or by joining organisations within the digital economy.