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.

EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Entertainment University of Bath and Bournemouth University The Centre for Digital Entertainment (CDE) supports innovative research projects in digital media for the games, animation, visual effects, simulation, cultural and healthcare industries. Being an Industrial Doctorate Centre, CDE's students spend one year being trained at the university and then complete three years of research embedded in a company. To reflect the practical nature of their research they submit for an Engineering Doctorate degree. Digital media companies are major contributors to the UK economy. They are highly-respected internationally and find their services in great demand. To meet this demand they need to employ people with the highest technical skills and the imagination to use those skills to a practical end. The sector has become so successful that the shortage of such people now constrains them from expanding further. Our Doctoral Training Centre is already addressing that and has become the national focus for this kind of training. We do this by combining core taught material with an exciting and unusual range of activities designed to challenge and extend the students' knowledge beyond the usual boundaries. By working closely with companies we can offer practical challenges which really push the limits of what can be done with digital media and devices, and by the people using them. We work with many companies and 40-50 students at any one time. As a result we are able to support the group in ways which would not be possible for individual students. We can place several students in one company, we can send teams to compete in programming competitions, and we can send groups to international training sessions. This proposal is to extend and expand this successful Centre. Major enhancements will include use of internationally leading industry experts to teach Master Classes, closer cooperation between company and university researchers, business training led by businesses and options for international placements in an international industry. We will replace the entire first year teaching with a Digital Media programme specifically aimed at these students as a group. The graduates from this Centre will be the technical leaders of the next generation revolution in this fast-moving, demanding and exciting industry.