The new 'UK Video Games Council' has announced its members—including reps from Larian Studios, Mic

Despite , videogames are still an enormous slice of the worldwide entertainment industry—making across the globe each year, which is more than the film and music industries combined. The UK government is finally giving us some bloomin' recognition for this fact, announcing the formation of a UK Video Games Council in its late last month.

Shared via a press release, the council is designed to "work in partnership with government to support the growth, innovation and international reach of the UK video games and interactive entertainment industry". It'll cooperate with the UK's Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, Sir Chris Bryant.

Twice a year, this council will meet to "provide strategic advice on how to unlock the full economic, cultural and educational potential of the UK games industry." In the same press release, the members of the council were revealed and, fair play to our government, this looks like a decent spread of representatives from around the industry.

The organisation's co-chairs are Jason Kingsley, CEO at Rebellion (Atomfall, Sniper Elite) alongside Nick Button-Brown, chair of Outright Games (a children's game publisher). As for the other members, rather than just throw a list of names at you with zero context, I've gone ahead and found some context, creating a larger, more complicated list. You're welcome.

1. Emily Bailey, CEO of Green-BiT—a software company that, best I can tell, is [[link]] aiming to help [[link]] the industry .
2. Saad Choudri, CEO of Miniclip—a flash game website from back in the day who, apparently, has gone . They're mostly concerned with mobile games like Subway Surfers.
3. Charu Desodt, studio director at Interior/Night—the indie dev that made
4. Kirsty Rigden, CEO at FuturLab—the studio that made
5. Dave Gould, senior director of sales UK and export at Take-Two Interactive—a massive publisher that handles , , and the mobile game dev .
6. Chris Van Der Kuyl, chairman at 4J Studios—who handled the console port for , among others.
7. Donna Orlowski, COO of Chucklefish—Who used to publish , also known for developing games like Starbound, and the upcoming .
8. Nick Poole, CEO of UKIE—or , a non-profit trade organisation that's existed since the early 90s, previously called the European Leisure Software Publishers Association until 2002.
9. Tara Saunders, studio head [[link]] at Larian Guildford—Larian Studios developed a little game called , as well as the Divinity: Original Sin series.
10. Maria Sayans, CEO of ustwo Games—who developed games like Monument Valley and Assemble With Care.
11. Tim Varney, Senior Corporate Counsel at Microsoft—a company that's only been growing its influence in the past years via Xbox. .
12. Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA—Also known as , another UK-based non-profit that was founded in 2001.

While the phrase "UK Video Games Council" makes me as wary as any other properly patriotic Brit, the selection above genuinely seems solid at first glance. I'm not sure what a twice-yearly session can do for the UK games' industry, but the selection of UK-based indie studios, advocacy groups, and the inevitable representatives from industry titans does seem like a good-faith effort to hear everybody out. Hopefully it'll go better than the one time .

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