One of my jobs as an international correspondent my job is to periodically examine the gaming industry here in the UK. Although most gaming industries provide quite an array of different genres to suit all tastes, the UK seems to have lost it`s tracks somewhere along the line. With the likes of Iron Storm, Battlefield 1942, and Swat4 Urban Justice, recently or due to be released; it appears that the adventure gaming side of things has taken a battering over the last few years. On saying that; the UK has had a couple of decent adventure games released like Syberia, Dark Fall, and the unforgettable Myst series, but many adventure gamers are feeling ostracized as they are very few and far between.

I spoke with a few UK adventure gamers and asked them what their thoughts were.

The general consensus was, that there arent enough dedicated programmers out there to take the time to develop them. As one player said, To make a decent adventure game takes time and hard work, it appears that its just so much easier to develop a shooting game placing enemies in strategic places, than it is to sit and work out puzzles, traps, characters, etc. before you can even contemplate the background settings.

That was the view from one side of the story.

I then spoke to a few UK game developers and asked them what their thoughts were, I explained how the adventure gamers in the UK were feeling and one company replied with the following.

To be honest with you, there’s not enough money to be made in adventure games in the UK, simply because the market at the moment is steering more towards the first-person shooters. Adventure games are very time consuming and you get little back in return for your efforts, more details can be read at empyreanrule.

Another Company stated that they concentrate on adventure games only and would love to bring their titles to the UK but its hard finding a distributor. They were convinced that if more adventure games were given a chance in the UK the genre would quickly expand.

Taking the limelight in the UK Gaming Industry is the Action genre.

Mostly dominated by the likes of Swat, Tomb Raider, Iron Storm, etc. If you check out the top 10 for the UK six or seven of them will be first-person shooters. The rest will be Sims releases. Many gamers are now getting to the stage where they are feeling overpowered by release upon release of Sims add-ons. The first Sims was original and great fun, and the first add-on Living it up extended the playability, but then they went from the sublime to the ridiculous with the releases of House Party, Hot Date, and The Sims Unleashed. Many gamers are now starting to boycott the Sims and are refusing to buy any more add-ons.

The game is quite good and can be funny, but I felt forced into buying add on after add on and I didn’t like it.

If they had just released one or two add ons then I would still be playing it but no they had to overdo it and lost a lot of potential customers by doing so. And so the debate continues.

Looking deeper into gaming in the UK, Strategy games (I feel) don’t really get the recognition they deserve, the Command and Conquer Series did quite a lot for strategy games, with further releases of Red Alert, and Command and Conquer Generals. But many Strategy games don’t even hit the shelves of our stores because they just don’t match up to the excellence of Command and Conquer, so in effect, just aren`t considered good enough.

After all, I have said it may give you the impression that the UK is suffering badly where games are concerned, on the contrary; it is a thriving business but could do so much better if the developers and publishers listened to what the people wanted, instead of trying to line their pockets with easy money.

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