Video games are as important to British culture as film, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has claimed during a keynote speech at the Develop conference in Brighton.

Speaking to an audience of developers, publishers and investors, Vaizey, who has backed the games industry since becoming Shadow Culture Minister in 2006, also highlighted the success of video game tax credits, which were introduced last year, allowing studios based in the UK to claim relief on up to 25% of their production costs.

“When I took on this role, I was completely blown away when I found out about this industry; it was just sitting under politicians’ noses,” he said. “There was all this talk about whether [games] promoted anti-social behaviour, when in fact we were looking at an industry in which Britain was one of the world leaders, and which attracted people at the top of their game in all sorts of fields, from the arts to computer science to physics.

“It’s also clustered – it’s not one of those industries that’s based in London, it’s everywhere from Brighton to Dundee. So it was easy for me to become a champion of the games industry, and push for games to take their rightful place alongside some of the more vocal creative industries like film.”

The minister was keen to emphasise the success of tax credits since their implementation in August 2014 after years of lobbying from the games industry. “In the first full year, around 67 games have qualified for tax relief, representing a total budget of over £180m and almost all of that money will be spent in the UK or in Europe,” he said. “We’ve also seen a host of applications flooding in over the last year.”

He also reeled off stats on the expanding audience for and influence of video games in the UK, such as there are 33.5m game players in the UK, most of whom are between 8 and 74: “UK consumer spending on games is almost £4bn; the games industry has contributed almost £1.5bn in GVA (gross value added) to the UK economy, and almost 25,000 jobs. I hope it’s the case that tax breaks are helping projects go ahead that wouldn’t otherwise have happened – and certainly not in the UK. There has been an explosion of games companies: the number has grown by a fifth every year since 2011, according to NESTA, driven by mobile games.”

Vaizey also mentioned the work of games industry pioneer Ian Livingstone, whose publishing company Eidos was responsible for the hugely successful Tomb Raider series. Livingstone wrote an influential report on the UK games industry for NESTA in 2010 and campaigned to get computer science put on the national curriculum to encourage a new generation of creative programmers.

“I told Ian with the full authority I have gained as a minister that he didn’t have a chance in hell,” said Vaizey. “A year later he succeeded. It’s still a work in progress –you can’t expect to introduce a new subject on the curriculum and for it to work overnight, but we are making progress and it puts the UK at the heart of the future of this industry.”

The minister also mentioned the University Abertay’s $4m protoype fund, which is set to support games projects and create jobs all around the UK. It is launching shortly. He also pointed out that Creative England, the screen agency that supports creative industries throughout the country, invested £1m in 44 video game companies in 2014, creating 30 new games.

A key emphasis though, was on the cultural role of games. “The British film industry – and this has been a passion of mine – has expanded its remit to support the games industry,” he said. “Games are taking their rightful place alongside the film industry as one of our most important assets.”