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Must Play May Campaign

This month Ukie has partnered with the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) on a new campaign for games, Must Play May.

To the wider world, the games industry has never been more successful. More people than ever are playing games and they now tackle broad range of topics and genres, across a number of platforms, spending £5.7 billion on games and games culture in 2018. They offer fun and many other positive benefits to the globally connected communities of millions who play them safely and sensibly every day.

With this great success however comes ever greater scrutiny from players, parents, carers and politicians about how the sector makes and sells games and keeps consumers safe.

And of course, in reality, success in the games sector remains difficult to achieve with ever more services and different content and media competing for games players’ time.

So it’s important that we keep reminding consumers about how amazing games are and how diverse they are in their content.

It’s equally important to make sure anyone playing games understands how game businesses make money, how long to play for, how age ratings and what parental controls are. We need to make sure that anyone asking questions about games can the find the answers that they’re looking for as easily and transparently as possible.

So we have helped put together Must Play May, a month-long in-store and online promotion to bring families and friends closer together over the bank holidays and half term. Highlighting the biggest and best games on the market, the campaign shows there's a game for everyone, whilst celebrating the positive aspects of video games. 

The comedy mum duo Scummie Mummies are also getting in on the action this month - check out their podcast with The Guardian Games editor Keza MacDonald on age ratings, being a step-mum and what to do if your child wants to be a pro-gamer. 

As part of the campaign we want to make sure consumers are given all the information that they need to play games safely and sensibly via askaboutgames.com which we run in partnership with the VSC (who administer PEGI age ratings in the UK).

Askaboutgames is where parents and carers can find out more games - how they’re made, how they’re played, what PEGI age ratings are and how to enjoy them safely and sensibly.

Crucially it gives people the chance to ask questions like what children should be playing online, what parental controls are, how to use them to restict screen time, and what games can be enjoyed as a family.

We want askaboutgames to be a tool for games businesses to use, to give consumers confidence in the games that they and their children play.

So we encourage all games companies big and small to use the logo and link through to all the fantastic guidance on the site so please have a look at the asset pack on the site to see how you can do this.