A Framework for Collaboration between the UK and China through Interactive Guidelines and Pathfinder Demonstrators

Working with the InGAME Creative Cluster, the InGAME International programme will deliver a Pathway to Partnership that provides a framework for collaboration between the UK and China through a combination of interactive guidelines and pathfinder demonstrators.

Our Pathway to Partnership will enable navigation of the legal, commercial, cultural and technological barriers and opportunities of UK-China collaborative working. It will provide a portfolio of formative UK-China industry partnerships that have been supported through de-risking and venture capital events. We will provide mechanisms to stimulate new partnerships and educate the sector in order to deliver sustainable impact.

To achieve this, we aim to meet the following objectives:

a) Determine the legal, policy, commercial and cultural barriers and opportunities to partnership
b) Review game experiences, technologies and production methods used in the UK and China
c) Encapsulate the findings from objectives a) and b) into a draft Pathway to Partnership framework
d) Refine this framework through demonstrators in social gaming, eSports and applied games
e) Foster new partnerships through networking, exchanges and technology de-risking
f) Showcase emerging partnership products and experiences to investors
g) Develop and deliver training and development through a mixed-media delivery platform

The UK and China have very different sector policies and surrounding regulations, compounded by differences in commercial models, audience demographics, culture and language. Moreover those differences extend to the types of entertainment and non-entertainment experiences together with the technologies and the production of those experiences. We will explore these factors within both countries and elicit the essential differences between them.

We will develop three strategically relevant and innovative transnational demonstrators, to both exercise and successively refine, over three iterations, our Pathway to Partnership framework. We will monitor our transnational development teams across the lifecycle from ideation to demonstration and in doing so observe any key differences in the approaches to innovation.

Pathway to Partnership will serve as a lens through which to frame a series of scoping, support and investment activities. These activities will be delivered in collaboration with our economic partners in the UK and China and we will draw on their extensive expertise.

We will develop the current and next-generation talent in the gaming sector of both the UK and China. In addition to addressing global growth in the video games industry, a key motivation will be to future proof workers in response to the growth of transmedia experiences, a creative field underpinned by the skills and knowledge required for video game development.