D2.2 Workshop Report: Games, Heritage, Arts, & Sport

The GAMEHEARTS D2.2 Workshop Report sets out to strengthen the European video game industry ecosystem (EVGIE) within the broader creative and cultural industries. Drawing on a series of formative workshops held across partner universities between April and June 2024, it positions video games as a commercially significant and culturally influential sector, valued at over €23 billion annually, with European player numbers rising from 222 million in 2019 to 246 million in 2023. Its central aim is to gather stakeholder insight into how the video game sector can collaborate more effectively with policy, cultural, and educational actors, a relationship the report describes as often marked by mistrust.

The workshops reveal a consistent set of challenges. Financial constraints, misperceptions of the gaming industry's value, and difficulty aligning expectations among partners recur across stakeholder groups, while persistent diversity gaps are evident, with women comprising only 22% of the European workforce in 2020. Grant systems were widely criticised as poorly matched to game developers, burdened by film-oriented framing, bureaucratic complexity, and limited game-specific expertise, and participants called for milestone-based payments, plain-language applications, and greater developer involvement. Concern also surrounded market saturation, post-pandemic investment caution, and unsustainable AAA costs, alongside a cautious and largely negative outlook on artificial intelligence's impact.

Beyond the industry itself, the report addresses the audiences and societal roles of games. Discussions highlighted a casual-hardcore divide, hostility toward women in multiplayer spaces, weak age verification and inconsistent regulation affecting minors, and the emergence of older "silver gamers" as an important demographic. Stakeholders advocated inclusive design, co-design, educational integration, and anti-harassment measures, alongside public-facing industry figureheads to counter the rarity of visible advocates.

Overall, the report concludes that its recommendations are interdependent rather than standalone, with cross-sector collaboration and targeted, developer-informed public funding emerging as central themes. The workshops have also established an expert network intended to inform the project's continuing work.