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Sunset For British Games Development?
Ahead of his keynote speech at Games Convention Asia, Games Workshop co-founder and Eidos life president Ian Livingstone spoke with us about the future of UK game development.
Currently it’s more expensive to develop games in England than anywhere else in the world, he said. Without even considering outsourcing to Eastern Europe or China, it’s cheaper to make games in Japan and America.
So we asked Livingstone whether we’re going to see the sun set on British game development. “I don’t think you will at all,” he told us. “Britain is perhaps the most creative nation in the world.
“If you look at the success of our film, our fashion, our music, our advertising, our architecture… we are a world leader, and those creative people are not going to go away,” Livingstone said, adding that it’s no surprise that franchises like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto started life in the UK.
Livingstone also spoke of his desire to see the UK government offer the game industry the same production tax breaks given to the film industry. “If we get a production tax credit into the system, it might make it more economically viable to produce games there.
“We might outsource production,” he added, “but the creative intellectual property will continue to be built and created in the UK – that will never disappear. The creativity will never go away. You just have to balance the books somehow.”
Words by N. Evan Van Zelfden
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If peter molyneux made Populous than it was awesomely creative.
Yes, UK has great talent, but really it falls short on nurturing and funding.
Britain, traditionally, has always had a government lacking in imagination and any progressive ideas whatsoever regarding the creative industries. But having shut down most other manufacturing industries and selling on the rest to foreign investors, I don't have much hope for the games industry being anything other than a cottage industry. Look at the movie industry we have here. We have immense talent matching up to anything out of Hollywood, (Neil Marshall, Danny Boyle), yet we have to scrimp and scrape to fund anything. Or rely on foreign input.
Having shut down the steel/shipbuilding industries and selling off the car manufacturing, the government now don't seem to have a clue how to nurture the creative and , yes, world-leading talent we have here. Unless we get some serious action from a modern, progressive and imaginative government, the games industry here will always be a talented but modest affair.
All this talk of Tomb Raider is making me want to crack open the old gal and give her a spin.
Um.... that sounds a bit rude doesn't it?
Not that there's anything wrong with that sort of thing.
Thread closed due to inactivity...........Hang on, No! We were just reading nexon7's post!
I think Germany and Japan has better record in Quality after USA
Japan -
Devil May Cry
Resident Evil
Final Fantasy
(atleast these are very popular with Western People too)
Germany -
CRYTEK - Far Cry, Crysis - FPS(but very good)
Piranha Bytes -Gothic 1,2,3, Risen -RPG
Ascaron Entertainment - Sacred1, 2(atleast equal to diablo)
All these games are of really high quality
Sweden -
DICE - Battlefield 1942, 2, 2142(Great Game), Mirror's Edge
Poland -
People can Fly - Painkiller and expansions, Major role for artwork in Gears of war,
as much as Art style of GOW feels lot similar to Painkiller.
CD Projekt - The Witcher(one of very good RPG's)
Russia -
Gaijin Entertainment - X Blades
Ukraine -
GSC Game World - Stalker SOC, CS, COP
X- Blade
and so on
Great Britain -
Bizarre Creations (PGR), Rare (You Know What), Lionhead (Fable), Realtime Worlds (Crackdown), Criterion (Burnout), Eutechnyx (Supercar Challenge), Evolution Studios (Motorstorm), Firefly (Stronghold), Creative Assembly (Total War), Media Molocule (Little Big Planet), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword), Relentless (Buzz!), Revolution (Broken Sword), Studio London (Singstar), Sports Interactive (Football Manager), Reflections (Driver), Travellers Tales (Lego series), Team 17 (Worms)
(Awesome you never ever made a Great Simple First Person Shooter or RTS or RPG in your Big country and you are clearly world leader, and you have awesome creativity (I donot contest creativity of Peter Molyneux - though, but he is just one great man).
It seems UK is busy with kids and Sports games only.
And USA also has its fair share of innovation. Doom,Quake, Planescape Torment, Never Winter Nights were also very innovative first time, and these genres have survived till now and are most famous.
But other countries have a Glorious present where as UK had a glorious past
and USA seems to have very good past, present and brightest future.
But for Record
USA -
At the most minimum
id Software - Doom, Quake, Rage
Valve - Half-Life 1, 2, Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead
Epic - Unreal Tournament 1,2,3, Gears of War 1,2
Bungie - Halo 1,2
Ensemble - Age of Empires 1,2,3
Bioware - NWN 1,2, SWKOTOR, Mass Effect
Betheseda - Elder Scrolls 1,2,3,4, Fallout 3
Nihilist - Vampire Masquerade Redemption
Troika - Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines
Maxis - The Sims 1,2,3
Raven - Star Wars Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, X-Men Wolverine Origins
Infinity Ward/Treyarch - Call of duty 1,2,3,4,5
Ion Storm - Deus Ex
Black Isle - Planescape Torment
Need I say more.
Still ---
“If you look at the success of our film, our fashion, our music, our advertising, our architecture… we are a world leader, and those creative people are not going to go away,” Livingstone said, adding that it’s no surprise that franchises like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto started life in the UK.
So you cannot stop Brain Drain, by being innovative. Everybody knows britain gaming studios are surviving by contract work and Innovative ones are migrating or closing.
Compared to Germany and Japan they are not world leaders in Game industry.
film, our fashion, our music, our advertising, - Wake Up you have been taken over by USA long time ago
our architecture - Eastern Europe is already choke full of more beautiful architecture while you are lot richer then them.
“We might outsource production,” he added, “but the creative intellectual property will continue to be built and created in the UK – that will never disappear. The creativity will never go away. You just have to balance the books somehow.”
Yes, but creative people will continue to go away to greener pastures. You just keep enlisting acountants after accountants and they will artisticly manage and balance the books, so that u will always be no. one on papers, without hard work.
So where is Britain world leader except the exchange price of Pound.
I do not want to hurt any one of any country but truth and fact cannot be looked over. And I am not USA, German or Japanese citizen. And I will happily Migrate to UK/USA as first choices if I will migrate.
But I intend to point out the artistic deterioration in Britain.
I also hate to say that Games have becomes only money spinners for publishers these days(look at myriad of faceless chineese and Korean MMORPG's, and lots of Formula Shooters)
Great Games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, Age of Empires, Planescape Torment are rarely attempted these days in mad rush to gather money only. The last innovative thing I have seen is Assasins Creed and Little Big Planet in last year. But I do not compare their impact to that of Doom, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Age of Empires, Planescape Torment and Halo(on consoles).(Except Little big Planet for PS3, but it is not a system seller)
"FPS(but very good)"
Nice.
You forgot Starbreeze for Sweden who made the two riddick games and the darkness three underrated games.
I disagree about Germany though, Crytek's games have nice tech but are effectively just well made shooters with stories you could write on the back of a cigarette packet. Those other companies you mentioned are nothing companies outside of Germany with all due respect. For example Sacred got a Metacritic score of 7.6 out of 10 and sold nothing like the 4 million units Diablo did so that claim was laughable.
As to your points about Britain they are immensey subjective since even in your own post you managed to point out infinitely more studios in the UK then in Germany.I should point out that most of Rockstar's main stuff is still made in the UK either at Rockstar Leeds, (PSP and DS GTA titles which are some of the best selling and rated titles for those plats) or Rockstar North (GTA and Manhunt games).
Hell Microsoft still largely lean on UK for their Xbox games;
Lionhead - Fable series
Criterion - Burnout Paradise
Rare - Patapon etc
I should also mention that whilst I loved Deus ex and enjoyed Planescape torment Little big planet has sold vastly more copies and is more in the mainstream then either of those titles. Whilst it isn't a system seller (neither was Doom, planescape torment or any of those titles you mentioned) it Certainly is in the top ten best selling and best rated games for the PS3 which isn't bad at all.
In fact if anything your list only goes to show how many games DO come out of Britain especially as you failed to mention that two of the best selling games and best rated games of this year are Empire total war made by Guildford based Creative Assembly and Batman Arkham asylum made by London based Rocksteady games.
You also claim that the UK is a big country but again this is immensley subjective since the two countries you claim to be better then us now i.e. Japan and Germany are much larger. The UK population has risen to 61 million people recently as opposed to the 88 million people in Germany and 127 million people in Japan. So really I would fully expect Japan a nation that doubles our own and is home to 2 of the three main platforms to produce more titles. What is remarkable is how few truly mainstream German titles are produced despite it being a large country. Do I even need to bother to point out that the US with a population of almost 300 million people is five times the size of us? too late I already did.
Oh yeah and I should point out that Bioware are a Canadian company and 4 of the studios you mentioned there for the US are out of business i.e. Troika, Ensemble, Black Isle and Ion storm. Whilst I rated each and everyone one of the for at least one title what we are talking about in this article is the CURRENT state of play in gaming.
Finally the statement about Peter Molyneux is highly amusing as this was your one attempt to be fair to the UK, yet ironically Pete is by far the most overrated man in gaming. Its common knowledge that he has merely been a figure head at Lionhead for years and hasn't worked directly on any of the titles that you probably love like the Fable games or Black and white 2 or the Movies and is well known for being a windbag who makes claims about the games his studio are making that never come true.
"Hell Microsoft still largely lean on UK for their Xbox games;"
Really?
"Lionhead - Fable series"
OK yeah.
"Criterion - Burnout Paradise"
No that's an EA studio and that's multiplatform.
"Rare - Patapon etc"
Um.... well first of all Patapon that's a PS3 exclusive made and second it was produced by Japan Studio; a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Asia.
Whilst the point was very badly illustrated, it is still a somewhat valid point.
Obviously Lionhead was right, but Rare have produced Viva Pinata for them, as well as Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark. Real Time Worlds developed Crackdown for them, and Ruffian Games will be doing Crackdown 2. Bizarre Creations gave Microsoft the Project Gothem Racing and Geometry Wars games.For the Live Arcade Banjo games and the upcoming Perfect Dark, who did they turn to? 4J games of Dundee.
So whilst Microsoft aren't dependent on the UK, they have made extensive use of UK studios.
I agree the talent in the UK is world class and that's why companies like EA, Square, Sony and Microsoft invest so heavily over here to take advantage of that talent.
I'm just a bit anal about giving credit in the correct places.
I stick my hand up and admit I got confused about rare this is what happens when you write a post at high speed.
In fact with Criterion I got ultra confused and at first wrote Forza motorsports and then realised that that wasn't them. Thing is I don't play racing games and there are so many of the dam things that I get them mixed up. I should note however that Criterion did work on Burnout to some extent but it still wasn't a very good example as it was multi platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_Games
The point was still the same in fact I was kind of suprised myself how many games are made by British games developers and how few mainstream, truly excellent games are made in Germany. Also I should note I said lean on not dependant in the sense that they effectively own Lionhead and Rare. I certainly wasn't suggesting they solely rely on us as clearly there two biggest franchises are Gears and Halo made by US studios.
Whoa, easy on the coffee nexon
I loved the first two Tomb Raider games, but after that most of the rest were ill-conceived, and often downright lazy in their execution. I think there's a lot of possibility for poor Lara Croft, but she's been waiting for a good story.
But apart from Tomb Raider, GTA, WipeOut and Jeff Minter, where's our Super Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy... I could go on.
Look at the British dev teams out there not mentioned.
Bizarre Creations (PGR), Rare (You Know What), Lionhead (Fable), Realtime Worlds (Crackdown), Criterion (Burnout), Eutechnyx (Supercar Challenge), Evolution Studios (Motorstorm), Firefly (Stronghold), Creative Assembly (Total War), Media Molocule (Little Big Planet), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword), Relentless (Buzz!), Revolution (Broken Sword), Studio London (Singstar), Sports Interactive (Football Manager), Reflections (Driver), Travellers Tales (Lego series), Team 17 (Worms)
Not to mention just started Ruffian working on Crackdown 2. There is plenty of creative talent out there in the UK making some excellent games.
"The creative minds will not go away"? From the two games he mentioned one has slowly trickled down to a mere footnote of its former glory (Tomb Raider) and the Grand Theft Auto's developers have migrated to the US and have been creating their ongoing masterpiece commenting on US life and politics in a marvelous manner.
And anyway great games are steadily being produced from many countries in Europe (Sweden's DICE, Germany's CRYTEK and so on) and an additional huge bulk is made in the US but not so much from Britain anymore.
It would be wise to actually agknowledge the sad reality of it in order to find ways to remedy this apart from mere wishful thinking.
"...and those creative people are not going to go away."
Really? I think the term 'brain drain' was coined in the 60s to describe the way in which creative people exactly like these were going away. So, erm... yeah.
Yeah, man, that Eidos is so freakin' creative it drives me crazy. How did they ever think of a woman who finds ancient treasure? And then do that ten times? Boggles the mind.
In fairness, Tomb Raider has never been beaten on it's own terms. The original game was a milestone in gaming history, and Core should be commended for their creation.
The last time Tomb Raider was cutting edge was in the 90's over a decade ago please try and move with the times.
I'm going through the PC version of Underworld right now. My first Tomb Raider game. No one can say anything positive about this series near me. :P
And... Uncharted?
You've missed the boat, mate. The first Tomb Raider was the dog's bollocks. Then maybe Tomb Raider 3. Since then it's all been downhill.
The TR series seems to be on a sliding scale for a lot of people with regard as to where the quality started going down hill. People tend to revere the first one quite rightly and to a more or lesser extent, the second one. But then people start to dismiss the others, I feel mistaking over-familiarity with crapness.
I always felt TR3 was what I term the 'misunderstood sibling'. Playing it on first release, I remember being shocked at how damn hard it was - I still feel it was a game made for the fans, something that just wouldn't happen now in these days of consumer-friendly games. It certainly didn't take the player for a fool. On the PS1, TR3 had a save function where the player collected crystals and used them to save anywhere - a hybrid of the first two games: (TR1: fixed save points; TR2: save anywhere). By the final boss level, I had no saves left and had to fight the boss and get the hell outta there in one go, certainly the most tense ending to a game I've EVER played!
But by TR4, don't forget, it was still only 1999, and the gamesworld wasn't exactly awash with 3rd person adventure games of the calibre of the TR series. TR4 was absolutely dripping in atmosphere: who can forget the nightmarish 'City of the Dead' level? Or sniping the heads off the skeletons in the Coastal Ruins? The fact is, is that even at their most glib and over-exposed, TR still blew most games of the time out of the water.
Today, the Tomb Raider series has been a very useful template for developers on how to handle very popular and successful franchises and the dangers of hanging on to their 'precious' for too long. It's easy to see in hindsight that by TR3/4, Core Design should have sold the franchise on to another developer, thus retaining their dignity (and jobs). A hindsight that has benefitted developers like Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot) and Insomniac (Spyro), who sold their still very popular cash-cows on the brink of that down-hill turn.
But I'm not so misty-eyed to see that up to now, Crystal Dynamics, with all their talent and cutting-edge technology, haven't bettered those 11-year old games on the story-telling, awesome level design and er- combat system.
The superb characterization and combat system of Uncharted is what is missing from the latest TR's. But even with the success of the Uncharted series, I'd be surprised if Naughty Dog take it past No.3 before passing it on.
(Sorry for the wall of text, lol)
Uncharted is a very good game, but the original Tomb Raider was better.
And you don't like Underworld? I don't know what to say to that.