It’s quite striking to put into perspective how far LostWinds has travelled in recent times.

Inspired by little more than a window-scene of foliage being thrown around on a windy afternoon, Frontier Developments’ Steve Burgess struck an idea for a game where the power of wind could be manipulated by the Wii Remote.

Soon after, Burgess posted this idea on Frontier’s internal message boards, which in turn grew into a full development process, eventually becoming LostWinds. In May last year the title began its digital migration to home consoles across the UK and US via Nintendo's WiiWare service. The following November it was announced that LostWinds was going to be distributed across Asia under the guidance of Square Enix, one of the most influential third-party developers in the world.

That long leap – from a window in Cambridge to the headquarters of Square Enix – puts into perspective how close-knit the industry remains, despite its geographical distances.

Yet the UK’s presence in this global industry is weakening. Development studios close and are rescued – and owned – by foreign benefactors, while the aspiring UK development workforce sees less incentive to stay in Britain and more reasons to move abroad.

Edge sits down with Frontier founder David Braben (pictured) to look over the biggest issues that face the UK industry today.


Edge: We’ve seen many studio closures in the UK over the past six months, but there is some silver lining to this, in that other developers can select and employ more talent. How do we ensure that job-seeking developers stay in the UK?
Braben: It sounds obvious, but it’s so important to not cut loose development studios. There was the conspicuous failure of Free Radical recently, which was a real shame, but it will be interesting to see how many of that team will remain in the country.

Now, a number of people from there have come to work for Frontier, and obviously another developer’s failure can be a short-term benefit for companies like ours. But actually, in the long-term from the point of view from someone that actually wants a job in the industry, they are being handed a reducing choice.

The closure of Free Radical was a real shame, but how many of those people are going to work for Crytek and go places abroad?


How many people did you manage to employ from Free Radical?
A relatively small number. We still don’t know how many we will employ, we’ve still got a big pile of CVs to get through. We had several tens of people apply. We were actually quite interested in buying the company.


When we spoke to the administrator we were told that a number of parties had formally declared their interest, did your interest in Free Radical go as far as a formal declaration?
Yes. But there was an issue. I was not happy with the way that the administration was conducted.


In what way?
[Long pause] I think, given that we were employing staff from Free Radical at the time, the administrator wasn’t prepared to entertain a discussion of us purchasing the company.

I’ve got to be careful with what I say about it, understandably, and that’s all I can say.


The Crytek buyout itself means that Free Radical’s Nottingham studios will be as British as the UK’s electric utility; it will sit in Britain but the profits will go elsewhere.
Well that’s the other thing that happens. We’ve seen a number of very good, very high-profile developers bought by big US publishers. And that’s where I think we may see more studio closures and redundancies, as their livelihoods are based on the success of their American parents.

Failures like Free Radical – and I’ve no doubt there will be others this year – bring a real concern about where the redundant workforce is going to end up. But also we have to ask where are the new university graduates going to go. It really isn’t clear.