Best Games To Come Out Of The United Kingdom

United Kingdom is renowned for many things! Fish n Chips, soccer and the Beatles but what most of us avid gamers don’t know is that it’s also home to some very talented game developers. Surprised? “I was under the assumption that most game developers are from Japan or USA” is the typical response that comes to mind. So the objective of this article would be to jot down the best games to come out of United Kingdom while also taking into consideration their developers. Here we go!

[tigertron]

Soccer? no, football.

I'd say the best games from the UK were the GTA and Tomb Raider games.

[fermcr]

There are other studios from UK worth mentioning like Rocksteady Studios, Codemasters, Creative Assembly, Criterion Games, Eidos Interactive, Evolution Studios, Rare (Hummmm !!!), Sports Interactive (FM franchise), Team17, Rockstar have 4 studios in UK (Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar Lincoln, Rockstar London, Rockstar North)... among others.

[HarryMasonHerpderp]

Yeah this list needs the original Tomb Raider games in, after all, Lara Croft is one of the most famous videogame icons of all time.

[Eyeco]

What about Rare games, forget the Xbox garbage cr@p ton era, thats not Rare, i'm talking about the NES,SNES,N64 era games like Battletoads, DKC 1,2,3, Killer Instinct, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Diddy Kong Racing

[ATi_Elite]

Errr for me it's the former Soviet Union and former Communist Bloc!

4A Games, Ukraine: Metro series

CD Projekt Red, Poland: The Witcher series

GSC Game World, Ukraine: STALKER series

Bohemia Interactive, Czech Republic: Arma series, DayZ, Take On helicopters

Vostok Games, Ukraine: Survarium

Egosoft, Germany: X-Series

Ubisoft Blue Byte and Related Designs, Germany: Anno Series

Eve Online, Iceland: Eve Online

Crytek, Germany: Farcry 1 Crysis 1 and Warface

The fall of the CCCP lead to some great game Devs!

[TekoIie]

I think Rocksteady deserves a mention here!

The Batman: Arkham games are awesome!!!

[bubblebeam]

Agreed.

I had no idea there were so many talented developers and studios situated in the UK before this read. Amazing.

In Australia, we don't really have much going on here. Mostly due to the fact that our government are very backwards, and we don't even have an adult rating for games. They only recently realised that the games industry is worth more than the movie industry (SHOCK! Horror!), so it is more of a real issue now.

People from the UK should feel some sense of pride after reading this.

[Picnic]

Bubblebeam, I've always been proud of Britain for gaming since about the age of 5 when I played Manic Miner on my ZX Spectrum 48k.
Unfortunately, the story of Matthew Smith who came up with the game (and Jet Set Willy) is kind of emblematic of the 'Who cares? It's just a young geek who's made a new kind of toy' attitude British government, the media and lots of the public had to these entertainment pioneers. It's easy to make the romantic comparison that he became like the Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd) of gaming and disappeared off the radar.
Later on in the early 90s, when gaming could depict more realistic situations such as Cannon Fodder, the media demonised the game for
using the perfectly elegant use of the poppy on its game sleeve and for daring to depict the impersonal destruction of young men in their prime. This has set a template ever since for looking for the next thing to either overattack (or overpraise). So the media makes no reference to charming games like Banjo Kazooie and instead chooses only to mention Grand Theft Auto so that it can fulfil its aim of painting gaming as a den on iniquity to take its troubled viewers minds away from some of the real vices in this world that are harming them and that they have brought upon themselves.

In everything except perhaps survival horror, British studios have significantly contributed to worldwide gaming. Sadly not so much, at least in recent years (although there was the likes of Adventure Soft's Simon the sorcerer back in the late 90s), in one of my favourite genres, adventure gaming. American studios have tended to cover that best with Lucasarts and now Telltale Games. Howeever, at some periods it's seem tied between the British and the Japanese as to who has contributed more. This is in no small part due to Rare - and later (although I still say to a lesser extent) Rockstar.

However I know that there are some Scandinvaian countries who have made some very distinctive games in recent years e.g. the first 2 Max Payne games (Remedy) and Mirror's Edge (EA Digital Illusions CE).

There will be more universities than ever offering courses in making videogames. But at heart it's still just a guy (usually) with a dream who makes it happen. Hopefully that Monty Python-like spirit that has sometimes been evident in British gaming may continue in some form.

[Sizzon]

Media Molecule did a great job on the LBP games.

[andrew22]

I thought LA Noire was Team Bondi (Australia) and GTA was Rockstar North? :\

Edit : Just had a thought (yes, it hurt), perhaps the PSP GTA's were R* Leeds.

[deep_fried_bum_cake]

The PSP GTA's were R* Leeds along with R* North. I find it odd that this would mention Leeds rather than North considering that North are the main developers for GTA as a whole.

[andrew22]

Agreed, very odd.

[SecretPsycho]

Might be wrong but wipeout was from Uk wasn't it?

[Picnic]

Unfortunately this turns out to be a half baked article. If you're going to come up with an article like this, confidently stating that 'These are the most famous games to come out of United Kingdom', then you have to include:

Lemmings (DMA design / Psygnosis)
Tomb Raider (Core Design- who also made Rick Dangerous and Chuck Rock. It seems that they always had a thing for prehistoric explorers).

How could you leave out Rare? They are the number 1:

Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie , Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and PDZero, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox Adventures, Kameo, Viva Pinata to name a few.

(And, although I don't necessarily expect them on a worldwide fame list, to any long time British player, Manic Miner), Jet Set Willy (Manic Willy with money) and Codemasters for Dizzy and Micro Machines - cannot be left out of a history of British gaming. Britain had several other studios whose heyday was prior to the PS1 such as Sensible Software for Cannon Fodder and Sensible Soccer, The Bitmap Brothers (for Gods, Magic Pockets, Speedball, The Chaos Engine), Team 17 - for Superfrog and others - and Thalamus for somewhat forgotten Commodore 64 platforming classic Creatures (no relation to a later game by the same name- they also made the far too tricky Summer and Winter Camp platformers).

[tigertron]

I think we an all agree that the UK makes some damn fine games. :)

[ZBlacktt]

Naughty Dog, Konami, Treyarch, Bungie Studios, Insomniac Games, Infinity Ward, Epic Games, Blizzard Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks, 343 Studios, Santa Monica Studio.

Not from UK.

[smeg0rz]

Lion Head, Rockstar North (GTA), Media Molecule, Reflections (Working On Watch Dogs), Codemasters, Crytek UK, Criterion Games, Rocksteady Studios, Evolution Studios, Rebellion are though to name a few.

Also, you'll notice, that many of the developers you have listed above have loooooads of britsh talent in them, notably Naughty Dog and Santa Monica.

[smeg0rz]

Oh any don't forget just how influential british have been in the whole history of games.

[ZBlacktt]

Total meaningless insecure posts. Stay with the fact that what I posted is a fact and don't try and spin that. Every company has dev talent from all over the world in their companies.

Also lets not forget the companies I listed are the ones with the top rated games and Game of the Years. Aside from GTA, everything else is B level and below on your list. That is a fact also. Well, GTA IV was a total bomb anyway. Lets hope GTA V can save it. Otherwise games like Sleeping Dogs will still be way better in that market as of to date.

Oh and I won't even click disagree on your posts. I'm not that shallow.