The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
It’ s game on as Hyper Luminal doubles staff during industry boom
As the gaming industry has boomed across Scotland, one Dundee firm has more than doubled its staff in the past year.
Games developer Hyper Luminal Games has gone from fewer than 20 staff to more than 50 in the last year.
The firm has also grown its revenue from less than £1 million to more than £3m this year.
Employment in the Scottish video games development industry grew 26% between April 2020 and December 2021, according to a new report by The Independent Game Developers’ Association (TIGA).
Dundee firms such as Hyper Luminal, 4J, Puny Astronaut and Stormcloud have all noticed the industry is booming.
Chief executive and cofounder of Hyper Luminal Stuart Martin says the pandemic has fuelled the growth.
“Our funding bodies have typically performed well over the pandemic as people have been staying at home and playing lots of games,” he said.
“For us it’s been fantastic. We’ve been able to grow revenue, grow headcount and bring in new talent.
“We started to increase the diversity of the team and brought in talent from further afield now that we’re open to remote working.”
The firm now has a 3040% female workforce estimates Stuart, whereas the first four years of the firm was all male.
Even with the enormous growth Hyper Luminal has experienced, the firm is still looking to recruit more staff. That means trying to find talent outside of Dundee to meet demand.
“If you look around the careers’ pages of all of the local games companies, they’re all hiring at the moment. There isn’t anybody sitting still,” said Stuart.
“There’s obviously only so much talent in Dundee itself, so a lot of this talent is being brought in from other hubs in England.
“We’re on a great trajectory and the industry locally and across Scotland is going to continue to grow over the next few years.”
Chris van der Kuyl, cofounder of 4J Studios, said everyone he knows in the industry is growing their businesses. He added: “The four companies we’re directly involved with – 4J, Puny Astronaut, Stormcloud and Ant Workshop in Edinburgh – have been recruiting as heavily as they can.
“They’re only restricted by how many people they can get in the door at the moment. In Water’s Edge, Hutch has in the past few weeks opened bigger premises, so clearly they’re in the same boat.”
The video games entrepreneur has previously predicted digital jobs will become the dominant force in Dundee.
He is now calling for continued support to keep encouraging careers in the industry. He said: “Dundee is an incredibly strong centre for games development and publishing, and we need to continue to grow it to make it even stronger.
“As an industry, we’re doing all we can to highlight the jobs that are there.
“But the more support we can get from Dundee City Council, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government to realise that this is one of our biggest and fastest-growing technology sectors would help us as well.”
The TIGA report shows that Scotland is home to 7.9% of the UK’s total game companies. It also houses 10.8% of developers.
Professor Gregor White, dean of design and informatics at Abertay University, said: “We’ve been conscious of industry growth in scale and value since 2020 and have seen some significant investment from multinationals with Unity, Rockstar and Epic establishing new offices across Scotland.
“The prosperity of the Scottish sector is fantastic for graduates for Abertay’s world-leading games courses with demand for graduates particularly high and the current environment has seen an increasing number of graduate start-up studios in Dundee.”