A Survey of the Irish Games Industry & the Ethics of Policy Research

This paper, by Dr Maria O'Brien of Queen's University Belfast, argues that the Irish games industry lacks adequate data on its size, employment, and number of studios, and that this gap matters because policy decisions are being made on uncertain assumptions. It frames policymaking as a complex, influence-driven process and notes the historical difficulty of getting digital games onto the Irish government agenda, despite a 2011 Forfás report that predicted significant job growth. The central contention is that insufficient funding for comprehensive surveys has left the sector's scale poorly understood.

The paper's main focus is the digital games tax credit introduced in Ireland in December 2022 and effective from January 2023. Evidence of low direct and indirect employment in the wider Irish audiovisual sector, drawn from a 2017 Olsberg SPI and Nordicity analysis, was used to justify the credit both nationally and under European Union state aid requirements. The author observes that success is expected to be measured by growth in industry participation and direct employment, yet relying on such metrics overlooks well-documented problems with precarious work practices across the games and creative industries.

Methodologically, the paper is a reflective, conceptual contribution rather than an empirical survey, so it presents no new sample or dataset. It is written from three vantage points: the author's role as an academic in the political economy of cultural industries, as a policy researcher and consultant, and as a board member of Imirt, the Irish games representative body. Its scope is national, centred on Ireland, and situated within broader debates about state aid and the quantification of cultural value. The author examines the ethical tensions of producing policy-relevant data from these overlapping positions, questioning how far datafication captures what culture is worth.