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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?"
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.
Elite, Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Tomb Raider, GTA series, Carmageddon, MUD, Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye, Starfox, Barbarian, Syndicate, X-Com, Shogun/Medieval:Total War, Dizzy series, Monty Mole series, to name a few
IMO, there are very few US developers (Origin at their prime, Looking Glass Studios) who can compete with the best of Britain in terms of innovation.
Like in Japan, the most successful US developers, such as Blizzard, are those who take an unoriginal concept and polish it
In Britain, the most successful developers were those who developed new genres
BTW, you can keep Derek Smart. We REALLY don't want him back.
- Rage
- Hotgen
- Kaboom Studios
- Computer Artworks
- Mucky Foot
- Crawfish
- Attention To Detail
- Silicon Dreams.
Just a few of the studios that were lost (as touched on in the article)Also, Infogrames (I won't sully the name of Atari by using it) pulled the plug on it's UK studios. Core has been pulled apart and is left with a far smaller development staff and a custodian manager.
It seems like the UK games industry may go the way of the UK film industry, the investment just isn't there unless Hollywood (EA let's say!) decide to pay for it. Let's face it, UK development is wholly reliant on US money. Maybe the independent movement will be it's only saviour as it seems to have been with the UK film industry.