BAFTA Games Awards: How BAFTA highlights and supports the UK gaming industry

Ahead of the 19th British Academy Games Awards, we sat down with Luke Hebblethwaite, BAFTA's Head of Games, to talk about the importance of the awards and BAFTA as a whole within the industry.

As a prestigious organisation, BAFTA has a unique social appeal that can help highlight the games industry on a larger scale.

Hebblethwaite said: "We're highlighting the best of games in ways lots of people in the mainstream may not realise, the skills behind them, the talent that goes into them, the diversity of the people in the industry. We carry a kind of media reach that can cross barriers in ways few other organisations can.

"Categories like Best Family Game and Game Beyond Entertainment showcase different aspects of what games can be and I think breaks some peoples' ingrained understanding of what games are to them.

"Us being that prestigious institution, people I guess understand what its role is within film and TV, and seeing that we're choosing to recognise games in that way definitely crosses a lot of those barriers."

Talking about the treatment the team behind Returnal - which won Best Game at last year's BAFTAs - received, he continued: "We invited Harry Krueger, the game director, over to BAFTA HQ to do a master class along with Jane Perry, who'd just won lead performer as well, and I think it slightly surprised them both because they got this kind of full BAFTA treatment.

"Exactly the same sort of thing we would do for Margot Robbie or Quentin Tarantino if they came, so that also when people come into BAFTA HQ there are games people in the pictures on the walls, so you see and understand that games are recognised in that way."

Hebblethwaite also touched on how BAFTA brings the games industry into the fold of the wider entertainment scene: "We recently did a masterclass on The Last of Us for our connect members, so this is people kind of in the first couple of years of the industry, but it was actually with the TV team, talking to the set designer, the prosthetics designer, and the clothes designer, talking about how they translated from the game to the TV medium and what the sort of constraints were, but also how things were different.

"It was a really great opportunity to bring those two worlds of games and TV together, obviously the TV show is being hugely successful right now, but a lot of the conversation was also about those people in the TV sector working on this game actually kind of sticking their heads under the hood of games for the first time and understanding the design choices, that the outfits people are wearing in games aren't just there by random choice.

"There's a lot of consideration that goes into those in exactly the same way that a costume designer would approach it for TV."

Within the games industry, BAFTA works to facilitate growth and connections. Hebblethwaite said: "We're really good at bringing the industry together to have discussions and meet each other and create a kind of melting pot.

"We've been running social events for games, the last one we had 200 industry professionals, from BAFTA winners and household names all the way through to people who are just starting their own indie dev studios.

"We bring people together and help make those connections that can change lives and generate those serendipitous moments where cool ideas are generated; I know for a fact people have gone off and formed companies with people they've met at BAFTA."

Hebblethwaite explained how these sessions help share knowledge and improve understanding throughout the UK: "Looking at MMO's, something that's very different to films and TV, there's no real equivalent, and also very different to single player games in the way they're created. I ran a panel talk with Creative Assembly's Hyenas team, the community management team from Fall Guys, and the creative director of Boom Beach from Space Ape.

"Talking about what the process is for creating an MMO game, there's a bit beforehand where you've got 'What are your design constraints from the start?'. This is going to run on X number of servers, it's got to have this many people, and can only draw this many triangles or the server melts through the floor like it's an alien.

"We kind of hit on this analogy that there's no light at the end of the tunnel, once you launch there's two tunnels. One is continuing development and continuing to maintain what we have, and there's a second tunnel that's kind of like next year's update, where you want to go.

"You're always competing with the challenges of a live community and an evolving game, maybe it's broken here, it's falling apart here, or the players aren't happy in this area. You're constantly trying to maintain and grow, but then you've also got longer term goals that you're trying to achieve at the same time.

"Having that discussion in, if you like, almost in layman's terms, to try and break down exactly what that means, was really enlightening. A lot of people there felt it kind of demystified a lot of what goes into those quite opaque things."

He continued about how winning a BAFTA award is invaluable for a studio's reputation and future business. Hebblethwaite joked: "I'm sure it's good for their sales. For sure, it brings a lot of prestige to those companies, kind of whatever scale you're at. It's invaluable in terms of how that company is seen by the industry, by people in the industry, by developers and other people they might want to work with. It's an understanding that it's a real recognition of the craft and expertise that goes in and the kind of investment in things that they care about.

"Probably for smaller publishers, it's an incentive to consider games with different kinds of appeal, if you look at our Games Beyond Entertainment category and the games that are selected within there, there's a lot of recognition that comes into that and I think, being that a lot of smaller publishers are involved in important conversations, and stand up for lots of issues, it's a nice way to kind of help recognise them as well.

"For developers it's a huge accolade to win, winning a BAFTA is very difficult. We had 248 games I think entered this year and only one winner per category, so it's stiff competition, you're up against the biggest games in the world.

"So, when people do win, that BAFTA can open a whole lot of doors regardless of what size your company is. For bigger companies, it's a recognition of the skill and talents that are there, and brilliant for recruitment.

"For smaller businesses, indie developers, that BAFTA unlocks a lot of doors and lots of opportunity for the future that helps your conversations that you have with publishers, with investors and all these kinds of things. Indie development is a tough gig, and I'm sure the BAFTAs are well appreciated by those who have them on their mantelpieces."

"BAFTA being that prestigious institution, people I guess understand what its role is within film and TV, and seeing that we're choosing to recognise games in that way definitely crosses a lot of those barriers."

BAFTA also holds initiatives such as their breakthrough programme, connect programme, and young games designer competition to foster the next generation of games talent.

Hebblethwaite praised these initiatives: "Fundamentally across what we do, it's about creating opportunities to both learn and increase your network and opportunities within the games sector for the talent.

"Whether that's young people coming up through our young games designer network who are winners or nominees, for that we continue to stay in touch with them throughout their careers, that's a really nice and wonderful community that builds.

"We involve them in our activities and they go on to get roles in the industry. For people in the early stages of their career we have the whole connect programme, which provides learning opportunities both in terms of craft but also kind of the fundamental skills you need to succeed in any job.

"Building both simple but also sometimes structured ways to network and bring people together and meet people that they wouldn't otherwise get to meet is really important to cross some of those barriers, we have all kinds of people in our network.

"Bringing those people together and sometimes letting them network themselves, or other times bringing those people together specifically to engage in conversations and roundtables, talking about industry issues or ways to help individuals is all fundamental to what we do, and why we go and create the content ourselves.

"We hope that out of that great ideas come, brilliant new companies are made, and great new games fundamentally grow out of all that."

Speaking specifically on young developers, Hebblethwaite elaborated: "It's amazing young people creating amazing games, and it's a really good vehicle for being able to talk about what goes into games and how they're made, what goes on behind the scenes; the kind of stories that those young people choose to tell in the games that they enter into the competition, all about social issues, their own personal identity, they talk about climate change, they talk about mental health.

"I think anyone who sees that competition and the outputs from it comes away from it quite affected really by seeing the importance of that medium to young people and I think that changes the perceptions that people have, particularly in older generations."

The 2023 BAFTA Games Awards takes place on the 30th March from 18:50 BST onwards. You can tune in to watch the ceremony live via BAFTA's official Twitch channel.