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If videogames, with their head-turning profits, loyal fanbases and avant-garde roots, are a parallel to the modern music industry, then Guildford, perhaps, is their Abbey Road. There’s an undeniable sound to the region’s development scene, one that riffs on Bullfrog’s legacy but manages to improvise all on its own. The artists here are many and varied, but close enough for a pint. From Lionhead’s poster child Fable franchise to Fireproof’s triple-A outsourcing design work, and around the block to Codemasters’ ever-expanding fortress of white walls and pristine hedges, it’s a town of ideas, fuelled by passion and defined by a community spirit that many other areas would kill for.
The heritage of the Bullfrog founding fathers may loom large, but it’s an area that has a rich cultural history of quirky and colourful creations with a very British flavour. Lewis Carroll completed Through The Looking Glass here, the cathedral from The Omen stands tall on the horizon, and Monty Python even has a connection via Terry Jones’ primary school years.
Guildford is as much about forward-thinking as looking back. As a collective of videogame creators, it’s a group riding every hardware wave, from PlayStation Move and Project Natal to Apple’s iPad, and it’s a group constantly competing to better itself and its neighbours. It prides creativity and ideas over manpower and margins, but it’s not in denial of the cushion that big studio backing can bring. It’s a place of warped angles, mish-mashed architecture and disorientating contours, but also a place of balance. Work, life and play collide where the chorus of the British game industry really began to get heard. The new sound of Guildford is an old tune played with the latest instruments. And it’s worth listening to.