“You can’t buy a BAFTA.” Why commercial influence is a red line for the BAFTA Games Awards

Ahead of today’s BAFTA Games Awards, GamesIndustry.biz sat down with BAFTA CEO Jane Millichip to discuss what’s new this year and what might change in the future.

The first thing that seems different about the 2026 awards is the name: it’s now the BAFTA Games Awards with Google Play. Millichip explains that certain categories have had sponsors before, but this marks the first time the ceremony has had a headline sponsor for the whole kit and caboodle.

What does that mean in practical terms? “Well, the revenue is really important for us, because award ceremonies of this calibre and quality are not cheap,” explains Millichip. “Production casts have just skyrocketed. So in quite simple terms, the revenue helps us to deliver a really beautiful ceremony with performances.” This year, the ceremony will feature a performance of “Suteki Da Ne” from Final Fantasy X by the Sonaris Ensemble, as well as a turn by singer Talia Mar.

But Millichip is at pains to point out that although BAFTA accepts and encourages corporate sponsorship, the BAFTA Games Awards is a very different beast from something like Geoff Keighley’s more commercially focused Game Awards. Not that she has anything against the Game Awards – “Everyone has their place,” she says, adding that BAFTA might even consider running trailers in future, something that Keighley’s show is heavily built around.

“Sneak peeks is something that we absolutely wouldn’t rule out, but we would always ensure that if we include it, it’s because we’ll have taken an editorial view on it. There wouldn’t be a commercial gain to us in showing a trailer, that’s what we would ensure. … Any additional content in our awards isn’t monetised, and actually upcoming news is something we absolutely would look at.”

Millichip emphasises the importance of BAFTA’s exhaustive, independently overseen judging process, which is free from commercial influence. “We are scrutinized by Deloitte across film, games and television. And so we are sticking ruthlessly to that rigor. Our members and jurors take very seriously the work that they do when they are judging and voting.”

“That’s important, because that’s why winning a BAFTA is so prized. Because you know that it’s not overly commercialized – you can’t buy a BAFTA, no matter what you do. It’s peer voted, and our members take that really seriously, and it’s a real honour to be recognised by your peers.”

Beyond TV and film

Even though the BAFTA Games Awards has been running for over two decades now, Millichip is the first to admit that it’s still not as well recognised as BAFTA’s film and TV award ceremonies.

“That is definitely the case,” she says. “That doesn’t mean to say it is not prioritised at BAFTA, it very much is. And it’s still a growth sector for us. Our membership in games is 1,700 and growing.”

The vast majority of BAFTA’s 14,000 or so members are still in the realms of film and TV: Millichip says roughly half are involved in film. But the industry body is keen to boost its games membership.

Millichip points towards the importance of BAFTA’s long-running Young Game Designers competition, as well as the school outreach work BAFTA does. “We work with a charity called Place2Be, which concentrates its work in areas of poor mental health: They’re known as education cold spots. So they give us access to the areas of greatest need.”

“At the starter career level, we run our bursaries, and we’ve doubled those in the last few years, particularly with the current economic landscape. We’re finding that quite often really talented people can’t trigger their career, because they can’t afford that piece of sound kit, they need a driving license to get to set, or they need a bit more training. So those bursaries have been really effective at kickstarting careers.”

She adds that BAFTA also provides mid-career support in terms of programmes like BAFTA Elevate and BAFTA Breakthrough. “Another area that we want to pay more attention to going forward is leadership, because we know that the underrepresented groups that we support in schools, in career starters, and mid-career, we’re seeing that those people … are not getting those senior roles. It’s often due to the inability to get the experience under your belt. So how do we help that?”

“We’re working on a BAFTA-wide mentoring programme, which we’re hoping to launch next year. But I think in a massively changing landscape, it’s how do we encourage and assist people to have resilient, sustainable, agile careers? Because I think that’s the key to maintaining a job in this sector.”

Rising representation

Millichip says that BAFTA is trying to ensure representation from different groups across its membership.

“We’ve put targets in for our membership across all three sectors around ethnicity, disability, and underrepresented groups, and we’re hitting those targets,” she says. “In games, we’ve set ourselves a target for 50% membership for women. [In terms of] new games members, we’re hitting 51%.”

She says that in particular, BAFTA sees a need to support women in the more technical craft categories across film, games and TV. “There are pockets, particularly in the craft categories – camera crew, sound, post, the technical categories – where we traditionally don’t see that many women. In film, we’ve made interventions into our film awards in the last few years to foreground the work of women directors, for instance.”

Those interventions involve ensuring there is parity between male and female directors in the long list that goes out to members. “That is to bring to the attention [of] our voting members the work by women. We’re not saying vote for it, we’re saying just watch it. Because what we found in the research that we’ve done, we got the sense that work by underrepresented groups, there isn’t a positive discrimination by our members against them, but sometimes their work is not being seen or watched or played.”

“We’ve made interventions into our film awards in the last few years to foreground the work of women directors”

Millichip says this kind of intervention hasn’t been applied to the BAFTA Games Awards so far, but adds that every year, BAFTA’s games committee does assess the judging, voting, and entry criteria and looks at the results. “We try not to flip flop too much, because one year’s results do not present a trend. However, when you get to three years, you’re thinking, ‘Is this a trend? Should this be addressed?'”

She emphasises, however, that BAFTA does not make changes for change’s sake. “Too much tinkering is not good for the sector, but not being rigid is also something that we try to do.”

Millichip says she wouldn’t rule out making interventions to ensure gender parity in the long list for future BAFTA Games Awards categories, but adds that games are quite different in nature from film and TV. “The way games come together and are designed, it’s much more team based than those big craft categories in film and television, like writing and directing. So whether the same intervention would work across games, I don’t want to opine on that. But are we addressing and are we alive to challenges within the sector? I would certainly hope so, yes.”

Back in January, composer Jessica Curry – who remains the only solo woman to have taken home a BAFTA Games Award for Music – said that it’s “extraordinarily hard to exist as a woman” in the games industry, which she said is “resistant to any form of difference” and is “very protective of its roots, which were male and white.”

Millichip says that she can’t comment from personal experience on the difficulties in the games industry, having come from a background in TV and film, but she does recognise there are “systemic challenges relating to the climate, as well as underrepresented groups. But equally, I see other underrepresented groups really thriving in the games industry, so it’s a peculiar beast in that regard. I think our role at BAFTA is to showcase positive role models, foreground them through our editorial program of masterclasses, showcases, that kind of thing, and to support.”

“And if there are difficult conversations to be had, we’re happy to convene them. We’re not afraid to face a difficult conversation.”

That might take the form of a debate among members either publicly or behind closed doors. “We do that across all three sectors when our members ask us to, really. So if the difficulties faced by any sector of our membership are pronounced … then we are very happy to convene the conversation. But overall, we try to maintain a positive, encouraging, supporting role within the game sector, because there’s a lot to be said for it as well. And we are surrounded at BAFTA by incredible female role models – and Jessica is one of them.”

Transmedia

The London Games Festival’s Screen Play event this week captured the rising interest around film and TV adaptations of video games, with Ubisoft’s Helene Juguet saying that nearly 25% of all movies being made in the next few years are based on gaming IP. BAFTA, with its membership spanning film, TV and games, seems to be uniquely placed to foster transmedia collaborations.

Millichip says this is something BAFTA would like to focus on. “I find coming from a film and TV background, I get more out of going to our game sessions than I do TV and film sometimes. So simply encouraging our film members to go to games events and vice versa is one of the really simple things I’d like to do more of. I’d like to get more sessions going where you have all three sectors on stage together.”

She notes there’s a healthy translation of gaming IP into legacy media right now. “But I think the more interesting piece is actually seeing how those creatives and practitioners get on when they work together and where they go with it – rather than simply translating each other’s work.” She’s keen to see how people across film, TV, and games “influence not only each other’s storytelling techniques, but production techniques as well.”

“People who care about games, their heads are not turned in the same way by traditional celebrities”

But one stark difference between the world of gaming and the worlds of film and television is the relative lack of celebrities in the former. Whereas BAFTA’s film and TV awards can benefit from appearances by major TV and movie personalities, video games don’t really have an equivalent.

Millichip doesn’t think it’s a problem, however. “We do get celebrities attending the Games Awards and presenting at the Games Awards. They tend to be game players themselves. So for the last few years we’ve had Phil Wang: He’s an absolute game fanatic.”

“It depends who you’re trying to attract really, because we want the Games Awards to be popular with people who care about games. And I find that people who care about games, their heads are not turned in the same way by traditional celebrities. … So I think it’s interesting rather than a problem.”

She points out that the culture of the video game world is more informal and democratic than the rarefied world of TV and film. “And I find that really refreshing. Really refreshing.”