God Save The UK Developer?

Thanks to TotalGames.net for its GamesTM-reprinted feature on the alleged fall of the British game developer. The piece argues: "It all used to be so different in the Eighties. Ignoring any rose-tinted arguments about whether games back then were better, worse or more peanut butter-flavoured, the inarguable statement can be made that they were certainly more British." But now, even though "the most popular game of this new decade - Grand Theft Auto - is British, despite all of Rockstar's attempts to hide the fact", the piece laments the lack of distinctive UK games with Python-esque worldwide impact: "Of course, it doesn't cost £5 million to pick up a pen and start writing a sketch about parrots, but surely the odd very obviously British game could be smuggled through?"

Comments

Coming Soon

[samael]

Black & White 2
Fable
BC
The Movies

And that's just from _one_ UK group....

Re:Coming Soon

[antime]

Psygnosis became SCEE Studio Liverpool several years ago. They were part of Sony even before the name change.

Re:Never noticed the impact

[easychord]

Never heard of Elite, X-Com, Populous, Syndicate, Goldeneye or Donkey Kong Country? These games may not fit into your normal buying habit but you may be able to find someone who has played one of them if you look hard enough.

If you want to look for influence Populous pretty much invented a way of doing strategy that was pretty influential. Elite is a wee bit influential as a trading, space combat and general open ended game.

A lot of British games are garbage, but you could say that about anything from anywhere.

Re:Ironic

[Wuukie]

One of the most influential games to hit the PC in a long time, Max Payne was developed by Mobius Entertainment, which is UK-based.

Actually the original PC game was developed by Finnish Remedy Entertainment. Mobius has made a GBA port of it.