Can we produce the next global blockbuster?

May 1 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

THIS week’s launch of what is expected to become the biggest selling video game of all time has inspired North East developers to create the next global blockbuster in our region.

Earlier this week gamers across the country camped outside stores through the night to get their hands on ultra-violent shoot-em up Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV).

The game is expected to smash the opening week sales record set by Microsoft’s Halo 3, and pull in £201m.

Newcastle-based retailer Grainger Games, which has 13 stores across England and Scotland, expects to sell over 10,000 copies of the game this week alone. The company saw around 300 people queue up outside each of its Newcastle stores in Benton and the city centre on Monday night before opening its doors at midnight. However, while the game’s launch may have attracted the hype, glitz and glamour of a Hollywood blockbuster, it actually started life in the humble surrounds of a flat above a shop in Scotland. The concept for the game was dreamt up by DMA Design, which later became Rockstar North, which at the time was based above a clothes shop in Dundee. And it is the humble beginnings of the game which has inspired North East developers to get to work on unearthing the next international bestseller.

The video games industry, which employs around 450 in the North East, is one of the fastest growing creative sectors in the region with an increasing number of development companies being created by our universities.

According to developers across the region, it could only be a matter of time before a game made in the North East creates a global stir to rival GTA IV.

Marc Williamson, who runs Teesside games development company Halch, said: “The North East definitely has the talent to create something to rival GTA IV. Although we are small, it gives us the challenge to look at building the next big thing.”

Kev Shaw, of Gateshead-based software firm Eutechnyx, said: “No one really recognises what we are doing here in the North East. There are a lot of high profit developers here that don’t get the recognition and the region is a digital hotbed.”

The Institute of Digital Innovation (IDI), which is part of the DigitalCity initiative run by the University of Teesside and Middlesbrough Council, also backs the North East as a potential birth place of game as successful as GTA.

An IDI spokesperson said: “The games industry is thriving in the region due to the high quality graduates that are coming out of the universities, staying in the area and setting up their own businesses.”

See nedigitalbusiness next week for a review of GTA IV.