As cultural artefacts, video games are complex, multi-faceted products that encompass creative practices from character and narrative, interaction and gameplay design, architecture, product and environment design to sound design and composition. Technically they bring together software engineering with maths and physics, AI with networks and user data. Bring these together with a dynamic and competitive commercial environment and a disrupted technology environment and a growing cultural significance and you can begin to appreciate the challenges faced by this industry. SMEs operating in the video games sector are subject to technological, market and platform disruption where platform access and 'discoverability' are significant challenges to product viability. These factors are exerting a downward pressure on innovation and the creation of original IP in the Dundee cluster. The InGame partnership will pursue a highly collaborative, embedded approach to R&D by establishing a dedicated a R&D centre at the heart of the cluster. Artists, designers and creative writers will be co-located with technologists and business specialists to offer a dynamic and responsive resource to engage with three significant high-level challenges - consolidated from issues raised through local consultation, a survey of over 700 UK games studios and the trade body's blueprint for growth - where combined collaborative R&D could lead to significant growth, sustainability and intensification for the computer games cluster in Dundee. Creative Risk: Over the last decade the dominant business model in the Dundee games cluster has shifted from a publishing model where development costs are borne by the publisher in advance of sales income; to a platform model where individual games companies carry the cost of development in return for as larger proportion of the sales revenue. As a consequence the risk attendant with the development of original IP for the games market is, more often than not, fatal for start-up and micro-SME studios. Technological Innovation: Working practices in this cluster are characteristically solution focused and iterative, and often inventive and ingenious. However, technology innovations are not systematically captured or tested for generalization or re-use value. Commercial pressure on value chains has inhibited SMEs from taking on the risk of high-value innovation activity resulting in lost economic opportunity and inhibited cluster growth. Organisational Development: The cluster is characterized by a high number of dynamic micro-SMEs creating content for mobile, tablet and PC gaming platforms. The city is also home to a smaller number of mid-sized SME's with established product portfolios ranging from original franchises, sub-contracted development for established franchises and studios developing games for console. There is a growing professional services sector (accountancy, legal) and cultural scene (galleries and events). R&D in organisational development in this context relates to start-up at company level through to cluster and ecosystem development. The education sector is foundational to the cluster; Abertay University's Center for Excellence in Computer Games Education is characterised by active and mature collaboration between businesses, universities, and agencies of every scale. The University's longstanding relationship with national and multi-national games companies offers a unique opportunity to catalyse the value chain in the Dundee cluster. The academic partnership with Dundee University in Design for Business, and St Andrews School of Management's expertise in Creative Industries offers a world-leading research base for the R&D partnership. The InGAME R&D Center and cohort of Creative R&D Fellows will establish a new mode of engagement for industry and universities to work effectively and responsively to meet the challenge of cross-sector collaborative R&D in the Creative Industries.

Digital games have extraordinary economic, social and cultural impact. The industry is one of the fastest-growing in the world, larger than film or music, with revenues expected to increase from $138 billion in 2018 to $180 billion by 2021. 2.6 billion people worldwide play digital games (21 million in the UK), with an average age of 35 and equal numbers of females and males. The Wellcome Trust-sponsored game Senua's Sacrifice, made in the UK, won 5 Baftas for its interactive and educational portrayal of psychosis. The UK games industry is a global leader - UK game sales are valued at £4.3bn with 12,000 people directly employed. The games industry is innovative and hungry for innovation - recent research breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have arisen through games research undertaken at Google DeepMind in the UK. Rolls Royce makes better jet engines using 3D technology pioneered in games. Games are leading the "data and AI revolution" of HM Government's 2017 Industrial Strategy. Games have become a massive lever for social good through applied games for health, education, and science. The mobile game Pokémon Go added 144 billion steps to physical activity in the US alone. The Alzheimer's Research-funded Sea Hero Quest game collected data equivalent to 9,400 years of dementia lab data within 6 months. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) first received funding in 2014, and has since been a huge success: raising the level of research innovation in games, with the highest-possible ratings in our EPSRC mid-term review. The next phase of IGGI will inject 60+ PhD-qualified research leaders and state of the art research advances into the UK games industry. The two core themes of IGGI are: (1) Intelligent Games: increasing the flow of research into games. IGGI PhD research in topics such as AI, data science, and design will empower the UK games industry to create more innovative and entertaining games. IGGI research has already enhanced the experience for millions of game players. IGGI will create engaging AI agents that are enjoyable to interact with, tackling fundamental challenges for the future of work and society that go beyond games. IGGI will spearhead new AI techniques that augment human creativity by automatically 'filling in the details' of human sketches. (2) Game Intelligence: increasing the use of intelligence from games to achieve scientific and social goals. Every action in a digital game can be logged, creating huge data sets for behavioural science. For example, current IGGI students have assessed traits such as IQ, agreeableness, or attention from large game datasets. IGGI students will investigate more intelligent, adaptive games for education and to improve mental health. IGGI will maximize the enormous opportunity for scientific and social impact from games by laying the research groundwork for further data-driven applied games for health, science, and education. IGGI will massively advance these research themes, and train 60+ PhD students to be future research leaders. To accomplish this, our updated training programme and 60+ research supervisors will provide students with rigorous training and hands-on experience in AI, programming, game design, research methods, and data science, with end user and industry engagement from day one. Recruiting and empowering a diverse student cohort to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion through games, IGGI will drive positive culture change in industry and academia. Students will work with leading UK experts to co-create and disseminate standards for responsible games innovation. Directly working with the UK games industry through placements, workshops, game development challenges, and an annual conference, they will advance research knowledge and translate it into social, cultural and economic impact.