Paul Durrant OBE

Paul Durrant has been supporting independent games development for the past twenty-five years. Paul has focussed on education, talent development and early-stage games content funding. The projects Paul and his team have founded and delivered have helped thousands of individuals in games development and many hundreds of companies. This activity has helped to create millions of pounds of inward investment for the UK. Paul was awarded an OBE for services to the games industry and to education in the 2022 New Year Honours.

Scotland's Got Talent: From the Enlightenment to the Present Day, How Does a Small Nation Constantly Find Itself at the Forefront of Technological and Creative Industries

Scotland has been a global reference on education since the Middle Ages, with major pushes for education in the XV century and the Scottish Reformation, and with Scottish universities being critical contributors to the Enlightenment. Today, Scotland has more top ranked universities per capita than anywhere else in the world, 5 in the top 200 (Edinburgh, St Andrews, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen). It continues being a reference in innovation and education, with examples like Edinburgh University leading AI research and robotics in the UK through School of Informatics/Bayes centre and Abertay pushing boundaries on games related education. 

In 1997, in the city of Dundee (a city with less than 150,000 people) Abertay University took a chance on a new path and launched the world’s first computing science degree. Today, it is an exemplar of industry collaboration and recognised globally as a top institution educating the next generation of the industry with several courses recognised in the top 10 of Princeton global list of games related university courses.

Scotland has given the world some of the most iconic games in existence. In a global industry that covers from entertainment to education and is at the forefront of technology, it is Scotland’s talent (we can say something about density of innovation or something like that) that really sets it apart.