Game Development Index (GDX)

GDX has been constructed by Transmuted Games as a measuring and benchmark tool. It is not volume but the relative industrial strength and the global advancement that the Game Development Index value for a nation, region or city expresses. GDX is the ratio of employees in game development to total population, multiplied by 100,000.

To provide some background, at the time of writing, about 65,000 are employed in watchmaking in Switzerland, while some 300,000 are employed in wine-making in France, scoring 722 and 434 respectively, with the same method of calculation. The top published GDX value is 518, for Stockholm, Sweden in 2022, and for a country, 101 for Iceland, in 2020.

     GDX = ( employed in game development / population ) * 100,000

The methodology for GDX is evolving. While data reliability is increasing in general, not least through increased use of standardized industry nomenclature, more countries are coming onto the world game development stage, with varying information source quality, complicating generalized weighting patterns.

We have been permitted to here share two sample applications of the tool, one for the world, ranking the top 30 countries, from a study for an international games trade organisation in 2020, and another study for a Swedish regional games industry cluster organisation in 2022, ranking Swedish cities with three or more active game development companies.