The Independent Game Developers Association (TIGA) is running a day-long seminar for its members next week, entitled 'Strategies for the 3rd Generation - How to keep the UK the place to make games in Europe.' I can't help but notice that our ambitions have been scaled down somewhat over the last few years. Once it would have been about how to maintain Britain's position as a world leader – but a decade of corporate take-overs, foul-ups and meltdowns has seen to that. Now, we are a mere outpost, desolate, endangered, struggling to keep the barbarians from the door.
How did this happen? When? It is interesting that the two guest speakers mentioned in TIGA's press release have their own stories to tell about the sickening of the UK games industry. Rod Cousens was CEO of Acclaim a now defunct US company that put its British studios to work on too many conversions and 'me too' genre titles. Ian Livingstone was Creative Director at Eidos once a shining success story, later buried by its heavy reliance on the fading Tomb Raider brand. Cousens' keynote speech is described thus:
"What are the challenges for 3rd Gen development? What can we learn from the last transition? How competitive is UK development and publishing and what does it need to do to remain a leading development cluster in the global context? How do we access new consumers and with what content?"
Does he have the answers, or just the questions? His new employer, Codemasters, will hope for the former. The company has been through some hard times but the incredible fortune of releasing Brian Lara International Cricket simultaneously with the greatest test series in history has no doubt boosted confidence (and financial clout). It is to be hoped that this bastion of good honest British design finds a niche for itself in this 'third generation' business. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that the company's latest endeavor to enter the MMORPG market is through buying the western publishing rights to a Korean game, RF Online. Codemasters' own in-house venture Dragon Empires was canned last year. I think when a British publisher builds and launches its own successful title into the massive MMORPG market it will be a sign that Britain is a major force once again.
Meanwhile, there are other British developers that lead rather than sheepishly follow: Lionhead, Rockstar North, Criterion, Creative Assembly, Bizarre Creations. Most now answer to American paymasters, but still manage to bring local flavour to their mega-hits. However, is there really anything other developers can be taught about the success of these studios – apart from to be in the right place at the right time with exactly the right brilliant ideas? That can't be taught can it?
And in the end, the question of how to remain a vital force in the worldwide development scene can't really be answered by the developers, it's about the publishers. Too many UK studios have become sweatshops for tie-ins and conversions, too many are working to creatively crippling 12-month deadlines. The British industry has lost faith in itself – it is busting its lungs just to keep up with the demands of next gen development. Making games is expensive, it's scary, so publishers adopt a Pokemon approach - got to have an urban racer, got to have a WWII shooter, an anti-terrorist stealth adventure, a gangsta romp, got to get that blockbuster movie license. Gotta catch 'em all. And British development is caught up in the maelstrom.
That's not how to become important. That is how to exist. Becoming a vast outsourcing factory, with the odd pocket of innovative resistance, cannot be this country's strategy for the third generation – whatever that might be. There is too much history. There is too much potential.
