Game Anglia showcase in Ipswich spotlights the East of England's booming independent games sector

An event celebrating independent game developers and studios took place at the University of Suffolk's e-sport building in Ipswich on Wednesday, where figures from the UK's games industry gathered to promote a sector that has expanded dramatically over the past decade. The showcase, hosted by Game Anglia, highlighted the growing cluster of small studios, graduates and creative businesses spread across the East of England, and the careers on offer to people who may never have considered gaming as a workplace.

Game Anglia is a group dedicated to raising awareness about careers in the gaming industry, and its founder, Mark Backler, told the gathering that the sector is now one of the biggest in the UK. He acknowledged that the industry remains competitive, but argued that it has never been more possible for a small team to design, build and release its own independent game. "It's like being a content creator - it's tricky to be one of the standout ones, but it is doable," he said.

One of the guests was Jarvs Tasker, director and founder of Jarvs Indie Insights, a company providing communication and marketing support within the gaming industry. Her own journey illustrates just how unconventional a route into the sector can be. In 2019, at the age of just 28, Tasker was forced to abandon her teaching career because of chronic illness - and seven years on, she earns double the annual salary she previously received in the classroom.

Tasker said she believes it would probably have taken her about 20 years of working in education to reach the income she makes today. After leaving teaching, she initially volunteered for PlayStation's YouTube channel, a route that quickly revealed how much overlap exists between the two worlds. Managing an online community, she observed, requires many of the same skills as managing a classroom of children - patience, communication and the ability to hold people's attention.

She also pointed to the industry being unusually open to people who arrive later in life, noting that video games is one of the sectors in which career changers are common. Living in Exeter, Tasker expressed concern that younger people may be unaware of the "many pathways" open to them. In her view, the games community is a strong one that will champion people who genuinely love their work - but which is equally quick to spot those who are in it purely for the money. "Passion is the most important thing," she said.

Asked about the rise of artificial intelligence, Tasker said she believed the industry is doing a "really great job" of rejecting it, because players disliked it. She argued that the sector should take pride in continuing to champion human creativity, noting that audiences appear to be on board with that stance. Her comments echoed the wider sentiment expressed at the event, where speakers repeatedly suggested that audiences value work made by people over work shaped by algorithms.

Backler said it is difficult to predict how AI will change the sector, but he pointed out that a significant number of players are opposed to its use. Sam Read-Graves, a developer at Read Graves who works specifically in the East, offered a more grounded assessment of the region's trajectory. He said the gaming industry has "grown massively in the past 10 years" and credited schemes such as Game Anglia for helping build clusters of talent.

Those clusters now span Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, Read-Graves said, bringing together large numbers of students and developers. He believes this concentration has begun to attract studios capable of making bigger games, while acknowledging the region's limitations. Titles of the scale of Call of Duty or FIFA are unlikely to originate in the East of England, he said, because the area lacks large studios. But for independent developers, he argued, there is no reason their games cannot be financially just as significant.

The event also spotlighted the experiences of younger entrants. Abbygale Dunn, 22, is the founder and director of Astral Forge, an independent game development company based in Essex. She said there is "so much space for women" in the industry today, but admitted that studying the subject was initially daunting. When she began her course, she recalled, only about three other women were enrolled on it.

Despite those early numbers, Dunn found the atmosphere welcoming. "Everyone is so kind; it's really not as bad as it seems, especially nowadays," she said. As a programmer herself - a role she noted is more rare for women - she added that she has never felt out of place. Her experience suggests that the concerns of an earlier generation of students are, for some, already being overtaken by a markedly more inclusive workplace.

Those looking to break through face a different challenge, however. Omar Khalil, game scout lead at Entity, said there is "no shortage of talent in the UK", but that creating the next big game remains a formidable task. In a crowded marketplace, he explained, good games are not in short supply - the real difficulty is securing visibility for them. "I think that's the biggest challenge," he said.

Taken together, the speakers offered a picture of a regional industry on the rise, with genuine opportunities for small studios and career changers, but also a competitive market in which standing out from the crowd remains the central obstacle. For Tasker, whose earnings have doubled since leaving the classroom, the event served as evidence that passion and transferable skills can carry workers into entirely new careers - provided they are willing to start from an unconventional place.