The new 'UK Video Games Council' has announced its members—including reps from Larian Studios, Microsoft, and non-profit advocacy groups UKIE and TIGA

UK, London, Big Ben and British flag.

Despite showing signs of ill health, videogames are still an enormous slice of the worldwide entertainment industry—making more than $100 billion across the globe each year, which is more than the film and music industries combined. The UK government is finally giving us some bloomin' recognition for this fact, announcing the formation of a UK Video Games Council in its creative industry sector plan late last month.

Shared via a press release, the council is designed to "work in partnership with government to support the growth, innovation and international reach of the UK video games and interactive entertainment industry". It'll cooperate with the UK's Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, Sir Chris Bryant.

Twice a year, this council will meet to "provide strategic advice on how to unlock the full economic, cultural and educational potential of the UK games industry." In the same press release, the members of the council were revealed and, fair play to our government, this looks like a decent spread of representatives from around the industry.

The organisation's co-chairs are Jason Kingsley, CEO at Rebellion (Atomfall, Sniper Elite) alongside Nick Button-Brown, chair of Outright Games (a children's game publisher). As for the other members, rather than just throw a list of names at you with zero context, I've gone ahead and found some context, creating a larger, more complicated list. You're welcome.

1. Emily Bailey, CEO of Green-BiT—a software company that, best I can tell, is aiming to help the industry reduce its carbon footprint.
2. Saad Choudri, CEO of Miniclip—a flash game website from back in the day who, apparently, has gone full games publisher. They're mostly concerned with mobile games like Subway Surfers.
3. Charu Desodt, studio director at Interior/Night—the indie dev that made As Dusk Falls.
4. Kirsty Rigden, CEO at FuturLab—the studio that made PowerWash Simulator.
5. Dave Gould, senior director of sales UK and export at Take-Two Interactive—a massive publisher that handles Rockstar, Gearbox, and the mobile game dev Zynga.
6. Chris Van Der Kuyl, chairman at 4J Studios—who handled the console port for Minecraft, among others.
7. Donna Orlowski, COO of Chucklefish—Who used to publish Stardew Valley, also known for developing games like Starbound, and the upcoming Witchbrook.
8. Nick Poole, CEO of UKIE—or The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, a non-profit trade organisation that's existed since the early 90s, previously called the European Leisure Software Publishers Association until 2002.
9. Tara Saunders, studio head at Larian Guildford—Larian Studios developed a little game called Baldur's Gate 3, as well as the Divinity: Original Sin series.
10. Maria Sayans, CEO of ustwo Games—who developed games like Monument Valley and Assemble With Care.
11. Tim Varney, Senior Corporate Counsel at Microsoft—a company that's only been growing its influence in the past years via Xbox. Growing a little too fast, perhaps.
12. Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA—Also known as The Independent Game Developers' Association, another UK-based non-profit that was founded in 2001.

While the phrase "UK Video Games Council" makes me as wary as any other properly patriotic Brit, the selection above genuinely seems solid at first glance. I'm not sure what a twice-yearly session can do for the UK games' industry, but the selection of UK-based indie studios, advocacy groups, and the inevitable representatives from industry titans does seem like a good-faith effort to hear everybody out. Hopefully it'll go better than the one time the Tories made a Discord server.