The many facets of culture in digital games policy: the EU dimension

State supports for digital games production within the European Union are subject to State aid rules, which are ostensibly justi ed on cultural grounds under the terms of the treaties of the European Union. So far, there are few decisions granting approval by the European Commission on aid regimes for video games (or digital games) in contrast to the extensive number of decisions for other audio-visual forms, such as lm. The Commissions policies towards digital games, as can be gleaned from an analysis of the current corpus of decisions, illustrates a complex and pragmatic approach to the digital games sector, one that considers games to be cultural, but not quite as cultural as lm. This article places the Commission decisions into a wider context of discourses on the cultural and creative industries and illustrates the signi cance of EU State aid policy to the digital games sector. The study also emphasises the importance of seeing State aid policy as a form of cultural policy and it highlights how culture as a concept may operate as an empty cipher to be lled with meaning.