The turnover of the Spanish video game grew by 21% in 2016

The turnover of the Spanish video game grew by 21% in 2016

The number of development studies has been reduced by 6% in 2017 due, among other factors, to the consolidation phase that the sector is going through

   The Spanish video game industry continues to grow and does so in figures that are not insignificant. In 2016, the sector reached 617 million euros , 21% more than in the previous year. However, for the first time since the 'White Book of Spanish Video Game Development 2017' began to be developed in 2014 , the report measuring the state of health of the sector, the number of development studies in operation has decreased. If in 2016 there were 480 companies that, not without hardship, tried to take their video games forward, last year it closed with 450 companies, 6% less .

It is not a figure that concerns especially the Spanish Association of Production Companies and Developers of Videogames and Entertainment Software (DEV), which developed the study in collaboration with the ICEX, which sees the contraction as an "anecdotal" fact, given that there are 130 studies waiting to be constituted. They attribute it to the "consolidation phase" that the sector is experiencing and that, according to the study, "is affecting both small and medium-sized companies." They go further ensuring that "the main factors that are driving this resizing are due to structural problems that also impede the growth of companies."


In this sense, the study indicates the search for financing as the main need of the industry. As the study reveals, 91% of companies' social capital comes only from the founding partners, 92% finances their operations with their own means and 48% also self-finances with the income from their own activity.


The white paper highlights that only 12% of capital is foreign. It is precisely at this point where the line of aid to the video game that the Secretary of State for Information and Digital Agenda, José María Lasalle, presented in the same act, with up to 6.25 million euros, would enter. to finance projects of up to 150,000 euros of independent studies, SMEs and self-employed who bill less than 2 million euros and are at least six months old.

Beyond the business issue
The Secretary of State for Culture, Fernando Benzo Sáiz, has also participated in the presentation of the white book of the video game in Spain. He has done so by appealing to the cultural aspect of the video game. "We are clear," he explained, "that the videogame sector is a priority and strategic, firstly because culture is based on creation and talent and there are few sectors like this in terms of creation, and secondly because it represents the culture of the 21st century, intimately linked to technology ".

Benzo pointed out that the sector should "keep taking off" and that for that "we must all be involved". In this regard, he recalled that Spain was ahead of the European Commission in the recognition of video games as culture and the implementation of a permanent working table to try to enhance the climate of collaboration and dialogue in the industry. "There are already concrete measures such as the establishment of contact networks," he said.

He has also highlighted the possibilities of an industry that not only deals with the video game as such, but educational projects that use software as a tool. "You are part of a strategic plan in which all parliamentary groups are involved," he encouraged.

Equally worrying is the structural inequality of the industry. The X-ray shows a young sector in which 80% of the studies did not exist just ten years ago and in which more than half of the companies have been created in the last five years and a business network consisting mainly of microenterprises of less than five workers and few or few medium and large companies. In this sense, 87% of the entrepreneurial mass is assumed by microenterprises with a turnover of less than two million euros, which only add up to 9% of the turnover of the entire sector. While 56% of all billing is in the hands of 2% of companies, which are those that bill more than 50 million euros. Most of them, shelling the report, are non-Spanish companies. And another worrying fact: 17% of companies,

A promising future
With these data on the table, the developers association does not hesitate to launch growth estimates and calculates that by 2020 the sector could reach a turnover of 1,440 million euros and reach up to 11,420 direct jobs - in 2016 the industry employed 5.440 people -.

Something, however, that obscures these figures is the presence of women in the industry who, once again, have stagnated at 17% and have fallen by one percentage point compared to 2015. One issue that has been emphasized Luis Quintans, president of DEV. "The videogame industry does love women and I say more needs women, the role of everyone is to try to accelerate that process and I would be satisfied if I were replaced by a woman because it would help the sector a lot," he said.


In this regard, Lasalle explained that the Ministry has indicators of "a tolerance deficit" in the sector. "You just have to see this audience," he said. And has given worrying data as only 12% of people enrolled in computer engineering are women, a number, he said, that decreases: "There are fewer women studying these subjects than fifteen years ago." Undoubtedly is the other great challenge facing an industry that has not only lost programmers but also players, specifically 3% compared to 2016, perhaps because of the harassment that many of them suffer, as Lasalle recalled. "We have to put an end to the excess of digital testosterone," he concluded.