When it comes to videogames, Scotland has a lot to be proud of. From the early success of titles like Lemmings and GTA, to the recently released Silent Hill: Townfall and the ongoing juggernaut which is Minecraft, the consumer games market is getting more visibility than ever - and that's before GTA6 is released. Yet, treating 'games' solely as a (virtual) box on a retail shelf, an app on a smartphone misses a huge amount of true economic and societal potential of games as a transformative technology.

For years, Scotland’s economic strategy for innovation has suffered from tidy, bureaucratic categorisation. On one side of the corridor, you have 'Tech' - enterprise software, fintech, data, cyber, AI platforms, scale-ups, and data infrastructure. On the other side sits the 'Creative Industries' - screen, theatre, music, design, games, performing arts and cultural festivals. Each has its own funding streams, its own trade delegations, its own vocabulary, and its own designated networking rooms where everyone nods along to the same familiar talking points.

The Scottish Parliament has backed an amendment from Scottish Liberal Democrat culture spokesperson David Green MSP, calling on the Scottish Government to establish regional gaming hubs and a National Games Innovation Centre to support start-ups and share expertise across the sector. The amendment cites recent closures and job losses in the sector, including at Axis Studios and Build a Rocket Boy, as evidence of the need for stronger support infrastructure.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced that Scottish Games Network founder and CEO Brian Baglow will deliver one of the opening keynote addresses at its flagship Community Over Code 2026 conference, taking place at the Hilton Glasgow from 11–14 October 2026. Formerly known as ApacheCon, Community Over Code is the premier annual gathering of the global open-source community, bringing together software engineers, committers, maintainers, and foundation leaders responsible for some of the world's most critical digital infrastructure.

The University of St Andrews has announced a special games-focused enterprise session as part of its annual Innovation Week, featuring Scottish Games Network CEO Brian Baglow (me!) alongside industry legend Carol Clark, Chief Operating Officer at Pocket Sized Hands and Honorary Professor in Practice at the University of Dundee. Hosted by the EdenTay Founders Community - the collaborative enterprise network linking the Universities of St Andrews, Dundee, and Abertay - the…

We’re looking for game developers and creators working on projects outside the consumer games market. Video games are no longer confined to entertainment. Around the world, the underlying toolsets, workflows, and philosophies of game design – from real-time 3D simulation and virtual production to behavioural systems and playful interaction design – are transforming industries including healthcare, heritage, education, architecture, advanced manufacturing and more.

Non-profit games careers organisation Into Games has announced Get Into Games: Dundee 2026, a dedicated one-day careers event designed to help young people break into the video games industry. Taking place on Saturday 26 September 2026 at Water's Edge in Dundee, the free event is aimed at young people aged 12–21, offering direct access to professional studios, academic pathways, and hands-on technical workshops.

First Minister John Swinney has appointed Alyn Smith MSP as the Scottish Government’s new Minister for Innovation, Technology and Tertiary Education. This is a role which is central to the future of Scotland's games ecosystem and the adoption of the national Games Action Plan. Smith succeeds Ben Macpherson MSP, who stepped down from the ministerial role last week. A former Member of the European Parliament and Westminster MP who was elected to Holyrood earlier this year, Smith brings extensive parliamentary and international policy experience to a portfolio central to Scotland's knowledge economy.

The amazing, grassroots cultural and music organisation Tinderbox Collective has announced PlayAway 2026, a one-day conference and exhibition taking place in Edinburgh this autumn. Scheduled for Saturday 24 October 2026 at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith, the gathering is designed to explore the intersections between game design, creative technology, the arts, education, and community work.

Glasgow-based solo developer Psyber Games Studios has announced its upcoming mobile title, Twitch Out. Currently in closed testing on Google Play, the hybrid-casual reaction game challenges players to test the absolute limits of human reflexes through minimalist, precision-based mechanics. Pushing the Twitch Point The core loop of Twitch Out is built around high-stakes simplicity: players must tap a vanishing light before it disappears from the screen.

Glasgow-based indie developer Silviu Soare, the founder of Ludus Pax Studios, has launched a crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming title, Tiny Fishing Villages. Following the release of three commercial titles built almost entirely single-handedly, Silviu’s new project aims to celebrate the culture, resilience, and history of Scotland’s coastal fishing communities through a cosy, accessible building game. Honouring Scotland's Maritime Communities…

Techscaler - the Scottish Government startup incubator programme delivered by CodeBase - has officially unveiled the 10 Scottish game development studios selected for its upcoming trade delegation to Gamescom 2026. The founders will travel to Cologne, Germany, from 26–30 August to represent Scotland's gaming ecosystem on the international stage. The mission aims to connect homegrown talent with global publishers, investors, platform holders, and commercial partners during the world's largest gaming trade event.

The Scottish Games Network has officially joined as a community partner for the upcoming TecTonic Night Summit, which returns to Barras Art and Design (BAaD) on Thursday, 10 September 2026. Part of Glasgow Tech Week, the evening event brings together over 400 founders, creators, investors, and ecosystem builders from across Scotland's digital, tech, and creative sectors. Breaking Down Ecosystem Silos…

BAFTA award-winning Glasgow studio Blazing Griffin has officially revealed its latest title: Batman: Caped Crusader – Chronicles. Developed in collaboration with Amazon Games, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and DC Studios, the game launches today, Friday 31 July 2026, exclusively on Amazon Luna’s GameNight platform. The release coincides directly with the global premiere of Season 2 of the animated series…

V&A Dundee and Abertay University Announce One-Year Game Design Internship Applications are open for a dedicated V&A Dundee Game Design Intern, offering a recent Abertay University graduate a paid, one-year placement embedded within the museum's Learning department. The role - salaried at £26,299.55 - is designed to bridge academic game design expertise with public cultural programming, museum learning, and interactive exhibition design.

Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) has issued a call for new and unreleased games to feature in its upcoming Drop In And Play session taking place this August. The free public showcase gives members of the community an opportunity to try out unreleased titles created by Scottish developers, while offering creators a fabulous opportunity to gather real-world player feedback. Public Feedback for Developers…

Dundee-based Lowtek Games (aka Ally Low) has officially released his latest title, Masuku, on PC via Steam. A Nintendo Switch release is planned for later in the year. The abstract strategy puzzle game, designed for 1–4, tasks players with placing, rotating, and flipping cards on a grid to select or cover up specific colours and symbols to meet shifting rules and scoring objectives.

Develop: Brighton in a baking July is less of a conference and more of a multi-day endurance sport with more than games on offer. Having navigated this particular marathon for around twenty years now, I arrived prepared. The survival toolkit this year was simple: a ludicrous amount of Factor 50, a variety of killer shirts (shout out to BLAKE MILL…

This Is So Much More Than Games... Scottish creative technology and immersive arts studio SUUM has announced OPTIKA, a major new day-and-night celebration of digital art and electronic music taking place at Glasgow's SWG3 next month. The event will take over SWG3’s Galvanisers Yard on Saturday 25 July 2026 as part of the official Glasgow 2026 cultural and sporting programme surrounding the Commonwealth Games.

Glasgow-based solo developer Silviu Soare - founder of Ludus Pax Studios - is set to launch his third commercial title, Tiny Terra Spaces, today, Thursday, June 25, 2026. The cosy, stress-free island builder will be available on PC via Steam, Itch.io, and the Humble Store. Built over 13 months of intensive development, the game serves as a creative love letter to the geography, rich history, and natural beauty of Scotland's islands.

The full line up for the third annual Glasgow Independent Games Festival has been announced including a World Premiere from the Bitloom Games - the studio behind Phogs. The Glasgow Independent Games Festival is officially set to take place on the 11th and 12th of July, in Glasgow’s Barras Art and Design (BAaD) building. This year's festival is set to take place over…

Creative businesses and games developers from across Scotland are being invited to connect, collaborate, and break down industry silos at a new cross-sector Media and Creative Meet Up networking event in Glasgow next week. Hosted by Barclays Eagle Labs, the Media and Creative Meet Up will take place on Thursday, June 25, from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM at Eagle Labs Glasgow.

Dundee studio Stormcloud Games has officially launched its latest title, Junkster, today across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. With Junkster, the team shifts gears (once again), delivering a vibrant, mechanics-driven 3D platformer centred around exploration, environmental clean-up, and a unique crafting/building system. Players control UM-13 (or UM for short), a specialised robot tasked with clearing up planetary debris, converting garbage into useful tools, and navigating hazardous terrain.

This week, the UK games industry is in Westminster. Meeting politicians. Making the case for investment, recognition and support. It's the right conversation. But in the wrong room. With the wrong map. And the wrong ambition. The UK has a secret weapon. A globally significant, internationally recognised, economically extraordinary capability in interactive technology that is already reshaping healthcare, education, defence, space exploration, urban design, data visualisation and financial services around the world.

On Wednesday 16 September 2026, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh will host a landmark event: Playable Heritage: Creating a Collaborative Framework for Collecting Video Game Culture. Co-hosted by National Museums Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, the National Videogame Museum, and Ukie, this free, one-day conference represents a major, coordinated attempt to build a UK-wide roadmap for digital preservation.

This week, the eyes of the global creative industries are focused on Shoreditch in London as the European edition of South by Southwest takes over the city. SXSW London has quickly established itself as a premier convergence of technology, music, screen, and interactive culture. On Thursday 4 June at 1:35pm, I will be taking the stage at Protein Studios…

For years I have been asking the quesstion: How do we protect, preserve and celebrate Scotland's games heritage? The announcement of the recent videogame heritage PhD studentship in partnership with Abertay University, the University of Glasgow, and National Museums Scotland (NMS) was a massive step forward. Today, that momentum takes another major leap forward. National Museums Scotland has launched a…

This evening, Thursday 28 May 2026, Dundee’s Biome Collective will host a public sharing of an extraordinary, Creative Scotland-funded residency project: GTMO 441: Games, Detention, Power. Taking place both in person at Abertay University and streamed live online from 5:30pm, the event offers a first look at experimental playable media shaped by the lived experience of Mansoor Adayfi, who was detained without charge at Guantánamo Bay for 14 years.

Speculative fiction and game design have always shared a common heritage. If you examine the foundations of modern narrative design, the link to sci-fi, fantasy, and horror is obvious. In an era where players expect increasingly complex, system-driven storytelling, the ability to build cohesive and convincing worlds is one of the most valuable skillsets in game development. This is why I am pleased to highlight the return of…

The global games market in 2026 is more crowded, volatile, and competitive than ever before. For independent studios and established developers alike, relying solely on consumer retail success is becoming an ever-riskier strategy. That is why I am headed to Brighton this July to deliver a session on how developers can unlock entirely new, sustainable revenue streams by applying their creative and technical superpowers outside the entertainment sector and the consumer games market.

Outplay Entertainment, Scotland's largest independent developer and a global titan of casual mobile gaming, has officially announced its debut Steam title, The Incentive Programme. Known internationally for its free-to-play hits that have attracted over 250 million players worldwide across franchises including Angry Birds, Monopoly, and Gordon Ramsay, the Dundee-based studio is taking a bold new creative direction.

Apparently, the Scottish Games Network is officially 21 today. If SGN were a person, that means we are a cool three years past our first legal pint, well over our wild teenage years, and firmly staring down the barrel of responsible adulthood. In games terms, twenty-one years is not just a milestone - it is roughly several geological ages. When SGN was born in May 2005, it was a purely social community.

This week, Ukie and OKRE released a landmark report: Building a Unified Framework for UK Video Games Impacts. It is a significant piece of work that arrives at a critical moment for the country's entire games ecosystem. At a time when we are seeing a record-breaking consumer market valuation of £8.76 billion alongside ongoing sectoral shifts and volatility, the question of how we measure our true value has never been more urgent.

The Scottish games ecosystem is about far more than just code and consoles. It is an industry built on the foundations of world-class storytelling and the ability to build immersive universes that can exist across multiple media. Which is why the latest project from the Edinburgh-based studio SuperForest is so interesting. The studio has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Little Bird…

Elgin has long established itself as the most (we think) northerly games hub in the UK. As the home of the excellent Moray Game Jam, the internationally successful Hunted Cow, and the specialised engineering team at Code Wizards, the region has a deep-rooted history of digital creativity - and a community of beautiful people. Now, that ecosystem is set to expand with the launch of a new public-facing event: the…

Project Pathfinder: Last week, the Herald published its list of the 50 most powerful people in Scottish arts and culture. It was an impressive collection of talent - but it was also a perfect snapshot of why the interactive sector remains a 'billion-pound ghost' in our national policy. Despite being one of the most successful and high-value creative industries we possess, not a single person from the games industry made the list.

This is a fantastic list. Truly. As I read through The Herald’s 50 most powerful people in Scottish arts and culture (Paywall), I see names that represent the very best of our nation – musicians, producers, actors, and advocates who have fought to keep Scotland’s creative heart beating during some of the toughest years in recent memory. I recognise many of them as allies.

Data is the foundation of any successful strategy. When I wrote the Level Up Scotland Games Action Plan, it was built on 1,000 data points collected over 22 workshops because I knew that without hard evidence, our industry remains invisible to policymakers. Today, I am asking for your help to sharpen that evidence by supporting a new initiative from Gina Jackson (OBE) and the team at…

I am delighted to welcome the announcement of a fully funded PhD research studentship, which is now open for applications. Developing a Framework for a National Collection of Scottish Games Heritage is a collaboration between Abertay University, the University of Glasgow, and National Museums Scotland (NMS). This is a significant milestone in our journey to treat games as a vital part of Scotland’s cultural identity and heritage.

The Scottish Games Network (SGN) has been officially shortlisted for the Strategic Partner award at the 2026 MCV/Develop Awards. This nomination marks a significant milestone in our journey to transform SGN from a simple news platform into the primary ecosystem builder for the Scottish games industry. However, the 2026 finalists represent a banner year for the entire country. It is incredibly encouraging to see so many Scottish games and businesses included across the categories, proving that the technical and creative excellence of our ecosystem is increasingly visible on the global stage.

Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity today revealed that £3,450 was raised in one week by kind gamers across the UK as part of the hospital's Play It Forward campaign, which invited gamers to stream and take on challenges to raise vital funds. The event was part of the GCHC's Games for the Weans programme and was sponsored by UK games publisher, Devolver Digital. 

On Thursday evening, I will be taking a seat at the high table of the national political debate. I have been invited to join the National Conversations Tech and AI Hustings, providing a critical opportunity to ensure the games sector is visible at a policy level. The event, which brings together representatives from Scotland’s major political parties alongside leaders from the technology and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, comes at a pivotal moment.

Scottish Enterprise recently published its research into the megatrends and breakthrough technologies reshaping business in 2026. The report is comprehensive, covering Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, and Bio-technology. However, it suffers from a significant - and all-too-common - blind spot. It entirely ignores the games sector. This is not an isolated incident. For several years, the games industry has been noticeably absent from every major strategy and plan published by and for the Scottish Government.

Umbra Dynamics has emerged as the major winner of the Regional EDGE competition in Tayside, securing a £50,000 top prize at a ceremony held at V&A Dundee. Led by industry veteran Marc Williamson, the former CEO of Tag Games, the studio is tackling a critical but often ignored gap in our ecosystem: the preservation and remastering of gaming’s vast history.

Biome Collective and Arcadia present Big Telly Jam at CoSTAR’s Realtime Lab The CoSTAR Realtime Lab at Water’s Edge is set to host a transformative one-day workshop on 6 May 2026, as Biome Collective and Arcadia join forces for the Big Telly Jam. Supported by Creative Scotland, the event is designed to dismantle the silos between traditional art, game design, film, and virtual production.

This week's announcement of a £30 million Games Growth Package by the UK Government marks a significant moment of recognition for the interactive sector. With the doubling of the UK Games Fund (UKGF) to £28.5 million and the introduction of grants up to £250,000, Westminster has finally acknowledged the importance (and potential) of the £8.8 billion consumer market. However, while this capital injection is a vital down payment for de-risking new intellectual property, it is not a complete strategy for the future of the Scottish supercluster.

Innovators from the Tay Cities Region who are revolutionising creative technologies from games to virtual production will be backed by up to £20 million from the UK Government – turbocharging the potential of local innovators. UK Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has confirmed that the Tay Cities Region in Scotland will receive funding from the competitive strand of the UK Government’s…

Barras Art & Design Centre, Glasgow, July 11th & 12th 2026 The beautiful Glasgow Indie Games Fest (GIGF) has officially announced its return for 2026, with tickets now on sale for the two-day celebration of independent development. Alongside the ticket launch, the Glasgow Independent Games Group, has issued an open call for speakers and exhibitors to showcase the best of the local and national indie games scene.

Kyle Banks, the solo Scottish developer behind the critically acclaimed Highland adventure Farewell North, has officially announced his latest project: Donut Panic. Available to wishlist on Steam, the title represents a stark tonal departure for the Edinburgh-based developer. While his previous work focused on an emotional, atmospheric journey through the highlands and islands, Donut Panic plunges players into the high-pressure world of a dingy, late-night cafe where the customers - and the pastries - are not always what they seem.

The entirely awesome Tinderbox Collective has announced the return of its Room to Play programme for 2026, inviting a new cohort of emerging artists, coders, and game developers to collaborate on interactive experiences and digital performances. The initiative, which sits at the intersection of music, technology, and play, is seeking participants aged 18-26 who are at an early stage in their creative careers.