HOW SCOTLAND BEAT THE WORLD AT VIDEO GAMES

Scotland has one of the most successful computer games industries on the planet – yet, why do we never talk about it? Is it the Scottish cringe? Or are we a nation of technophobes? Today, in an exclusive interview, the industry’s point-man in Scotland, Br

BRIAN Baglow can’t help but wonder what’s up with Scotland. The industry he’s worked so hard at building from the ground up is one of the country’s greatest success stories – not that you would know it. There’s almost universal silence when it comes to how this small nation of ours turned the bedroom hobby of computer games into a global entertainment giant.

From a standing start, with roots going back no more than 40 years, our games industry hasn’t just made some of the biggest games in the world, it’s made the biggest games in the world, from Grand Theft Auto to Minecraft – franchises worth billions. We were the first nation to create video game university degrees, and we’ve got the world’s greatest studios right here.

It’s like having Hollywood on our doorstep. In fact, the games industry globally is actually worth way more than the revenues from all film worldwide – $152 billion versus $42bn – yet there’s barely a word said when we should be singing our success from the rooftops.

Why don’t we shout about it more? “Because we’re Scottish,” says Baglow, the director of the Scottish Games Network, which represents the industry here at home.

The Dundee connection

SCOTLAND’S path to success in the games industry can be traced back to 1982 when Clive Sinclair decided to have his new invention, the Spectrum home computer, made at Dundee’s Timex factory. It became a huge UK hit, ushering in a revolution in home computing. A little seed was planted in Scotland. Today, Dundee is a global games factory on the Tay.

With local parents working at Timex, Dundee kids got turned on to gaming. In 1987, one group of Dundee twentysomethings set up DMA Design, and brought out an early hit called Menace – a shoot ‘em up with spaceships. It sold well, allowing them to lay the foundations of today’s industry.

DMA Design, founded by David Jones, had its first real worldwide hit with Lemmings – now hailed as one of the greatest games of all time. Baglow sees the release of Lemmings as the moment Scotland’s games industry was really born – when Scotland went global. “It came out in 1991,” he says, “so it’s just celebrated its 30th anniversary.”

Come 1997, just 10 years after its founding, DMA released Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and changed gaming forever. GTA became one of the most popular and bestselling franchises in history, worth around £10bn.

Baglow says: “If you took Pirates Of The Caribbean and multiplied it by whisky you’d get GTA.”

DMA would eventually become part of the international giant Rockstar Games with key bases in Edinburgh and, of course, Dundee. Rockstar was behind the hit series Red Dead Redemption, acclaimed for bridging the gap between gaming and cinema with its