Our team
Nick Gibson
Prior to co-founding GIC in 2003, Nick was senior games and internet analyst at UK investment bank Durlacher for over 7 years where he analysed listed UK games companies and worked on over a dozen investment, M&A and IPO transactions.
As one of the first dedicated games analysts in Europe, Nick established himself as not only a unique domain expert in listed European games companies but also as a highly respected analyst and commentator on the industry as a whole.
Nick’s expertise won major telecoms and software clients seeking strategy consulting including BT, Orange and Microsoft. Nick worked with senior Microsoft execs on European games market opportunity identification, competitor analysis and market sizing, all prior to Microsoft announcing Xbox and its intention to enter the games console market in 2000.
Nick has founded or helped to found and fund half a dozen games start-ups and sat on numerous games and software company boards over the years. In 2014, Nick founded Gunjin Games, a free-to-play mobile games developer which he ran for 4 years and whose first title, Auto Warriors, received over 1,200 Apple Features across the world. At Gunjin, Nick developed hands-on experience of the power of data to transform a game’s profitability, customer acquisition costs and retention funnels.
Nick is focused on bridging the gap between the games and finance industries. He leads GIC’s investor/acquirer projects but contributes to most of our strategy and policy consulting.
Rick Gibson
Rick Gibson co-founded GIC and has specialised in videogames since the late 1990s. He originated Video Games Tax Relief, and ran the UK industry’s Games Up? Campaign, providing the economic and cultural arguments until the Relief was won in 2012.
Rick has started 2 organisations, an interactive video start-up which raised 2 rounds and closed in 2017. He then founded and led the British Games Institute charity, which saved the UK’s only games museum, the National Videogame Museum, working with Sir Ian Livingstone for nearly 5 years.
As BGI CEO, Rick worked to preserve and grow the NVM through the Covid pandemic. He trebled its income in 3 years; raised £0.75m from arts and 3rd sector funders and led the organisation to generate over £2m in turnover.
Rick is a passionate advocate for education, diversity and inclusion. At the BGI, Rick founded and won funding for a range of innovative games culture, skills and diversity programmes such as Level Up, working with under-represented communities in Yorkshire, and Next Level, working with women of colour in Sheffield.
Before he left the BGI in 2022, he co-founded Games Careers Week, another pan-industry campaign to encourage more diverse applicants into careers in games.
Rick has advised many big media companies, run scores of workshops and has trained companies in games clusters. Rick leads most of our strategy work and is one of the most experienced researchers advising governments on games sector stimulus policy.