Game Over, New Game: An ecological perspective of video game industry resilience in Liverpool

The main point taken up in this short paper is the evolutionary resilience of the Liverpool’s video game ecology, a term used to conceptualise the sector agglomeration in a peripheral city region (Toulmin, 1990; Boschma, 2015). New trajectories of regional growth ‘do not start from scratch but are strongly rooted in the historical economic structure of a region’ (Neffke et al, 2011:261). Few studies have examined why different types of regions experience diverse path-dependent development (Isaksen, 2015). Furthermore, there has been much discussion over an evolutionary approach to regional resilience (Christopherson et al, 2010, Cooke et al, 2011). This paper examines the evolution of the video game ecology in Liverpool City Region and its ability to adapt and reconfigure industrial, network and institutional structures against the backdrop of external and internal shocks (Boscham, 2015). Rather than seeing resilience that is based on a return to equilibria or multiple equilibria, ‘resilience is considered as an ongoing process’ (Simmie and Martin, 2010:31). Evidence is derived from 25 primary qualitative interviews with video game firms’ own-managers and supporting institutions at a local and national scale. Secondary data, both qualitative and quantitative, has also been used to supplement the analysis and inform the broader context.