Submissions for Australia’s next National Cultural Policy closed in May 2026. I wrote one, on behalf of Tasmanian Game Makers, because I want games taken seriously as what they are: the art form most of us actually play.
Read the full submission on Tas Game Makers
Here are the highlights.
Games are the art form of our time. In 2025, 82% of Australians played them, the average player was 35, and women now make up just over half of all players. On the government’s own data, digital games development has been the fastest-growing of all cultural and creative activities in the country over the past decade. Games are also one of our most export-heavy creative industries: 93% of the Australian sector’s revenue comes from overseas.
Games are also weightless. A finished game is a digital file, sold and downloaded online, with no freight and no distance cost. That makes them the ideal creative export for regional Australia, and for a state like Tasmania where no postcode is classified as a major city.
Cultural policy papers almost always open by assuring us that art and culture matter to the fabric of society. It is true, and it is also the easiest sentence in the document to write. The harder question is which art and culture Australians actually live in from day to day. Increasingly, the honest answer is video games.
And games are not just entertainment. Consume Me examines body image and disordered eating. Venba tells the story of a Tamil immigrant family through food and culture. Night in the Woods, part of our work at Secret Lab, deals with depression, anxiety, and the slow decline of a small town. Games use interaction to explore the same human territory as our best novels, films, and theatre.
A few of the recommendations:
- Fund games as culture, with multi-year operational funding for studios, the way we already fund performing arts companies.
- Fix the Digital Games Tax Offset so it reaches small and regional studios, not just the big end of town. Right now you need $500,000 of spending on a single project to qualify, which locks out almost every Tasmanian studio.
- Add a regional loading to federal arts and games funding, to offset the real costs of distance.
- Back the people and places that grow talent: individual creators, community organisations, games education, and regional connectivity.
There are twelve recommendations in all, with the evidence and the international comparisons behind them. Other countries already fund games this way and get strong returns: the UK’s games fund, for example, was independently found to return between £3.80 and £7.30 of value for every £1 invested.
If you make games, play games, or just think cultural policy should reflect how people actually spend their time, I’d love you to read it.