As many queued for hours to get their hands on the latest Grand Theft Auto video game, BU’s Adam Twycross – an expert in computer animation and video games – talked on BBC Radio Solent about the computer game industry in the UK.
Grand Theft Auto is just one of the games franchises produced in the UK, and Adam, a Demonstrator and Lecturer in Computer Animation at BU, told presenter Alex Dyke that while the UK video game industry only employed around 7,000 people, it generated more than $5.2 billion last year.
“They really benefit from the fact that you can do it on a much smaller scale with a much smaller team and have just as much impact in terms of economic value and cultural value as if you were working on a movie or television,” he said, adding that video games companies could be found up and down the country.
He told Alex that BU computer animation graduates went on to work in both TV and film and the video game industry, with around a 50/50 split.
“I think one of the reasons that we’ve had a lot of success here in Bournemouth in the video games sector is that it’s an extraordinary industry which meshes together maths and programming and physics with art and animation,” Adam said.
“You’ve got a huge, broad range of skills which go into a single game and that’s what we try to replicate at Bournemouth where we teach our artists not just how to animate and create artistic things but also the programming and maths.
“So we traditionally have produced the individuals that the video game industry likes to have.”
Adam added that he believed the games industry in the UK would only continue to grow and diversify, reaching out to different audiences and demographics.
“It’s almost hard to imagine how big it can get,” he said.