Time to take off the noise-cancelling headphones…Liverpool’s gaming sector wants a voice
Time to take off the noise-cancelling headphones…Liverpool’s gaming sector wants a voice
Plus: A truce of sorts at Blue Coat
Dear readers — we hope you had a peaceful weekend, unlike actor Sean Bean, who found himself getting turfed out of Liverpool’s Tom Thumb bar for vaping last week. “He was being a right ****hole,” according to one member of staff — perhaps one too many Higsons for the Game of Thrones star… (though the bar’s owner has since apologised, and welcomed Bean back any time).
If you’re still playing catch up with last week’s editions, here’s a quick run down. On Tuesday, long time Post reader and first time freelancer Glyn Mon Hughes wrote a brilliant piece about the impact of the Welsh on Liverpool. It got a lot of you talking in the comments — why not join in on the conversation? Then on Thursday, Abi dug into one of the touchiest subjects in the region: trains. How does a new £17 billion train line to Manchester Airport benefit Liverpool, if at all? Find out here.
Over the weekend, Jack kicked off our election coverage, travelling to Southport to see if the seaside town might kick the habit of a lifetime and elect its first ever Labour MP. “What came across so powerfully is that Southport has no plan or vision to arrest this decline,” one of you commented. “You have to attract footfall for economic success”.
Editor’s note: Here at The Post we’re almost entirely reader-funded, which is why we can spend significant lengths of time on individual stories rather than churning out clickbait filler. But it also means we need your support more than most to provide Merseyside with the better quality of journalism it deserves. We currently have a little over 1,600 of you on our paid list receiving an extra two stories from us a week, including gripping investigations and great cultural pieces about the region. If you’d like those dropping into your inbox too, click the button below. It costs just £7 a month and will also give you access to our next members-only event (and the buffet that comes with it — bonus!).
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Big story: Time to take off the noise-cancelling headphones… Liverpool’s gaming sector wants a voice
Top line: Liverpool’s gaming sector is the largest creative industry in the region, but you probably wouldn’t know it. Leading voices from the sector are now saying they desperately “need a voice”. It’s time we took them off mute and gave the sector the support it deserves.
Context: In May it was reported that Liverpool’s gaming sector generated £220 million for the economy annually. It employs 1,800 people across 50 companies.
But that success is laced with frustration, with several key figures telling Prolific North they need more support in a lengthy three-part report. “I don’t think there’s any faster growing industry in the country,” Wushu Studios’ Craig Pearn told the publication. “And yet, there’s still not the right amount of attention given to it from the politicians.”
Déjà vu: Long-time Post fans will know this isn’t the first time we’ve talked about high-value businesses feeling frustration. “We have been screaming at them for over two decades but they refuse to remove their noise-cancelling headphones,” one source told us for our 2022 long-read on Liverpool’s faltering inward investment prospects.
The gamers’ grievances appear to be two-fold:
Firstly, that local politicians had failed to shout loudly enough about their successes (they cite the example of gaming being given just one mention in Liverpool’s draft cultural strategy for 2021)
Secondly, that the film sector has been aggressively pursued (e.g. via the Littlewoods project), but gaming has been neglected , despite gaming actually having a stronger presence here already (whereas it's now highly unlikely it’ll ever be a leading presence in film —- given the number of other cities that have built new studio space since Littlewoods was first announced).
Redundancies: earlier this year, the local gaming sector suffered a significant blow. Sony, which bought out the Liverpool-founded Firesprite in 2021, announced massive cuts, including at its Liverpool-based Firesprite office.
Fun and games: Despite that bad news, gaming remains a major strength for the city (firms like Lucid Games, Milky Tea, Wushu Studios and Ripstone are big players, alongside Firesprite). Industry figures did also cite external factors as having a negative impact (such as Brexit decreasing the available talent pool) but believe other issues could be addressed locally.
Studio struggles: One example was the lack of quality studio space for firms to set up in. Helen Cross, the digital and creative sector lead at Liverpool City Region Growth Company, responds that while “there might slightly be a perception that there’s not enough space”, firms need to be more willing to “compromise”.
Potential crossover: Ripstone’s Phil Gaskell, in the Prolific North long-read, stated his belief that the city’s gaming and film sectors could work in conjunction. Some movement appears to be happening over at the endlessly-stalled Littlewoods, and Gaskell notes that prior to the fire in 2018 the site could have been perfect for a company like his. Perhaps his ambitions could be revived if the project ever comes to fruition:
“It might have been a pipe dream at the time to be positioned as a game maker inside of a film setup, where there’s a lot of transferable skills. But then the fire came along. For years it’s just faltered, there’s been nothing. I thought it was the real beginnings of a rebirth of the region…but it never really happened.”
Your Post briefing
A truce of sorts at the school where superb grades and ceaseless scandals go hand in hand: National Education Union members at Blue Coat have voted to suspend their strike action after reaching an agreement with teachers. Last month we revealed that the school’s now-departed head Scilla Yates was alleged to have assaulted a union member at an ill-tempered meeting at the school. Talks fell apart following that incident, leading to four days of strike action in May. Interim head Kevin Sexton (who joined on secondment midday through the strikes) and chairman of trustees Sean Fitzsimmons said they were “so pleased” by the news.
“Drunk on power”: Labour are closing in on total control of Merseyside, expected to take every parliamentary seat in the region next month. But murmurs of discontent have spread about the people (or indeed the person) pulling the strings. Few will recognise the name Liam Didsbury, Labour’s regional director in the North West, but party sources have complained that selection processes for Labour have become the Didsbury Show — with only his allies getting a look in. Didsbury, alongside Sheila Murphy (who returned to North West politics on a “clean up” mission in 2021) and Anthony Lavelle (the man who attempted to oust Ian Byrne in West Derby in 2022) has been at the forefront of Labour selections for numerous positions.
For example, David Baines, who is allied to Didsbury, will stand for the party in St Helens, while Cheshire's new police and crime commissioner Dan Price is said to be a personal friend of Lavelle. Meanwhile, Murphy is said to have played a key role in ousting Mick Whitely as Labour’s Birkenhead candidate (as well as attempting to place Lavelle in West Derby) and Lavelle himself previously worked for Peter Dowd, whose niece has wound up running Sefton Council. In various cases, party sources say standard selection protocols have been ignored, with the regional office having an unusually large involvement. One Labour councillor told The Post that Didsbury was “drunk on power”.
Legendary former Liverpool defender Alan Hansen is seriously ill in hospital. A statement from the club said “the thoughts and support of everyone at Liverpool FC” were with Hansen, also known as ‘Jockey’, who won three European Cups, eight league titles, two FA Cups and three League Cups in 620 appearances for Liverpool, after joining in 1977. “We will provide any further updates as we receive them in due course,” they added.
And finally, the three year government intervention at Liverpool City Council is finally over (sort of). Saturday marked the end of the official involvement of Mike Cunningham and co, though he is expected to remain on an informal basis, overseeing a strategic improvement board and continuing to report back to Whitehall. In any case, it's a big step forward and a clear sign that the council’s darkest days might be in the rear view mirror (though not if you ask the Sunday Times, who recently ranked LCC the second worst performing council in the country…)
Home of the week
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Post Picks
🎸South London band Fat White Family head to Hangar 34 on Wednesday to celebrate the release of their fourth album, Forgiveness Is Yours. Doors open at 7pm — buy a ticket here.
🧘A great way to relax and recharge this summer, Wirral Wellness Festival takes over Birkenhead Park this weekend with a host of yoga sessions, talks from expert speakers, and fitness classes from 12pm on Saturday until 5pm on Sunday. Find out more here.
🎵An evening of ceilidh dancing at Ullet Road Church this Saturday. The Celtic Knot Ceilidh band have two sessions of dancing scheduled with an interval in between. The event is BYOB.
💃The eighth edition of the Afro Dance Academy’s Afro Dance workshop is being hosted at Arts Bar on Hope Street this Friday. The session is suitable for both beginners and experienced dancers, with the event starting at 7pm.
Recommended reads
On Liverpool, sleeping on Kurt Cobain’s floor, and being a glam rock kid – without the outfits: John Robb of The Membranes and Louder than War fame shoots the breeze with Explore Liverpool, ahead of his upcoming UK tour.
And here’s a piece from the Guardian’s back catalogue: writer Charles Lambert fondly recalls a depressing encounter with his Liverpudlian heroine Beryl Bainbridge, where she delivered some rather bleak insight into the life of an author. “It was a real downer,” he writes of the interaction, “but she was captivating.”
Great article. I’ve long been trying to argue that Liverpool/LCR needs to be celebrating its gaming sector. It’s such a selling point for the UK - not least Liverpool. This is why we need some more good quality office space built
The digital and creative sector lead at Liverpool City Region Growth Company, responds that while “there might slightly be a perception that there’s not enough space”, firms need to be more willing to “compromise”.
It's not a perception that the city lacks decent workspace, it's a fact. Expecting companies that can choose from a range of high quality workspace in other cities to "compromise" is tantamount to asking them to leave.
What is the point of having a lead for an industry sector if their every working moment isn't spent obsessing over tackling its needs and exceeding its requirements?