In May 1980 two Liverpool University students were selling programs by mail order, and every tape they sent out was a separate SAVE from their computer, because they had no duplicating machine. By August 1985 one budget publisher, Mastertronic, was receiving around 200 games a month from people who hoped to be published, and Sinclair User was telling would-be authors that breaking into software had become as hard as getting a recording contract. In five years Britain had grown a games industry out of almost nothing, and it had done it with cassettes, sold for a few pounds in the same high-street shops as records and stationery.
That industry’s companies mostly did not last. Many of the best-known names of the 1980s were bankrupt, bought or renamed by 2000. But their people went on to new studios, and a line runs from those tapes to Grand Theft Auto, Total War and LittleBigPlanet.
Cheap computers
The machines came first, and Sinclair made them cheap. The ZX81 of March 1981 cost £69.95 built or £49.95 as a kit to solder together, against almost $300 for a Commodore VIC-20, and Sinclair advertised “over 50,000 in the first 3 months”. The ZX Spectrum followed in April 1982 at £125 for 16K and £175 for 48K, with colour and sound. Sinclair had them built under contract, much of it at the Timex factory in Dundee, where ZX81 production rose from 10,000 to 80,000 a month in its first year.
Acorn’s BBC Micro was dearer, at £299 and £399, and came with a public mission. It was the machine of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, which began with The Computer Programme on BBC2 in January 1982, and in July that year the government announced a £9 million scheme to put a microcomputer into every primary school, paying half the price of an approved machine. The BBC Micro became a common sight in British schools, and it was the computer Elite was written for.
How many homes had a computer is harder to pin down than it is often made to sound. A Meal survey reported in the summer of 1987 found that “18% of homes in the UK own a sub £500 home computer, which equates to 4 million homes”. The magazine that reported it warned that surveys like this were “fairly hard to understand”, and pointed out that owning a computer and using it were different things: if all four million homes bought one game a week, “software sales would be through the roof”.
Publishers and the post
Anyone with a Spectrum or a BBC Micro owned a development system, and a publisher needed nothing from Sinclair or Acorn to sell software for it. Publishers advertised for programs and read what came through the post. Ocean began in Manchester in 1982 with an advert in Your Computer, and one of the programmers who answered, Christian Urquhart, was still at school. The first wave of companies was small and often short-lived: Bug-Byte (1980) and Hewson Consultants (1980), then Imagine and Ultimate Play the Game (both 1982), Software Projects (1983), and Gremlin Graphics, U.S. Gold and Mastertronic (all 1984). The bedroom coder entry follows the programmers themselves, and what they were really paid.
By 1985 the door was narrowing. Sinclair User’s feature “Programs for Profit” found that Mastertronic looked at about 200 submissions a month and published four to six. The same feature worked out that a £6.95 game paid its author about 40 pence a copy. Publishers were moving to teams, and by May 1986 Ocean had up to sixty programmers under contract at once.
Cassettes on the high street
Games reached buyers through ordinary shops. An advertisement for Activision’s Ghostbusters in January 1985 listed “selected branches of Boots, WH Smith, John Menzies, Lasky’s, Spectrum, Rumbelows, Woolworth and good computer software stores everywhere”. Mastertronic went further still. It launched in the spring of 1984 with games at £1.99, when most cost between £5 and £10, took more than 100,000 orders in its first week, and sold through newsagents, garage forecourts and motorway service stations as well as W H Smith.
Magazines
A crowd of specialist magazines grew up alongside the games. Computer & Video Games appeared in November 1981, before the Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was on sale. Sinclair User followed in April 1982. In Ludlow, a market town in Shropshire, Newsfield grew from a Spectrum mail-order business into the publisher of CRASH (February 1984) and ZZAP!64 (May 1985), each reviewing games with several named reviewers. Future Publishing began in Somerset with Amstrad Action in October 1985, and Your Sinclair took its name in January 1986.
The magazines made programmers into names. “Software houses are endeavouring to promote the programmers as well as the programs,” Sinclair User wrote in February 1984, and “those whizz-kids might soon be elevated to the status of superstars.” Hewson put its authors’ names on its games, among them Andrew Braybrook, Steve Turner and Raffaele Cecco. Ultimate went the other way and said almost nothing about itself, while CRASH counted fourteen Spectrum hits in a row from it, with an average review score of 93%.
Headlines
The industry was news beyond the specialist press. Gremlin’s Wanted: Monty Mole, a Spectrum game about a mole stealing coal during the miners’ strike, with a caricature of the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill, was featured on the national television news on 25 July 1984. Sixteen days earlier, on 9 July, Imagine Software had been wound up with a BBC documentary crew still filming. It had grown from a front room to more than a hundred staff in eighteen months, and the programme went out on BBC2 that December.
Where it happened
The industry grew up in regional towns and cities as much as in London, often because one company’s staff founded the next nearby.
| Place | From | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 1980 | Bug-Byte, Imagine, Software Projects, Psygnosis (later Sony’s Studio Liverpool), Bizarre Creations |
| Manchester | 1982 | Ocean Software |
| Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire | 1982 | Ultimate Play the Game, later Rare |
| Ludlow, Shropshire | 1983 | Newsfield, the magazine publisher, and later Europress Impact |
| Sheffield | 1984 | Gremlin Graphics, and later Sumo Digital |
| Birmingham | 1984 | U.S. Gold and its distributor, CentreSoft |
| Cambridge | 1980 | Sinclair Research, Acornsoft, and later Frontier Developments |
| Guildford | 1987 | Bullfrog, Lionhead, Criterion, Media Molecule |
| Dundee | 1988 | DMA Design, later Rockstar North in Edinburgh |
Two of these clusters grew from single companies. Guildford’s began with Bullfrog, formed there in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, and by 1999 Edge counted about 300 developers in the town. Dundee’s began with DMA Design, founded in 1988 by David Jones, who had been an apprentice at the Timex factory.
Bigger teams, bigger owners
The 16-bit machines raised the cost of a game, and the consoles raised it again. Psygnosis, founded in Liverpool in 1984 out of the wreck of Imagine, published only for 16-bit machines and made its name with Shadow of the Beast and DMA’s Lemmings. Sony bought it in 1993, and its WipEout was the best-selling game at the European PlayStation launch.
Over the next few years most of the big independents were sold. Electronic Arts bought Bullfrog in 1995. Infogrames bought Ocean in 1996 and Gremlin in 1999, Eidos bought U.S. Gold in 1996, and Hewson had gone into receivership in 1991. Gremlin had bought DMA Design in 1997; DMA passed on to Take-Two and became Rockstar North in 2002. Infogrames closed its Sheffield studio, the old Gremlin, in 2003, and many of its staff moved to a new Sheffield developer, Sumo Digital.
Studios with roots in the period
When Edge listed the world’s leading studios in February 2013, its British entries included Codemasters (founded 1986), The Creative Assembly (1987), Jagex (2000), Rockstar North (2002), Rocksteady (2004) and Media Molecule (2006). Two of them grew straight out of the 1980s: Codemasters was started by Richard and David Darling, who had written for Mastertronic as teenagers, and Rockstar North was DMA Design renamed. David Braben, co-author of Elite, set up Frontier Developments in 1994. Electronic Arts bought Codemasters in 2021.
State support, and its cultural test
Government money came late. Edge reported in February 2013 that the government had confirmed tax relief for British developers, and it took effect on 1 April 2014, as a payable tax credit worth 25% of qualifying production costs. Games qualify only by passing a cultural test, scored on their cultural content, cultural contribution, where they are made and who makes them. Edge’s news panel summed up one consequence: “Devs can earn tax relief points by setting their games in the UK.” Its gloss on the announcement was “Touché, Canada?”, a nod to the incentives that had drawn studios abroad. From January 2024 the relief began to be replaced by the Video Games Expenditure Credit, at 34% of qualifying expenditure, and games must still be certified as British.
Sources
- Big K issue 4, July 1984, p. 20: Tony Tyler on Liverpool, including Bug-Byte’s mail-order beginnings in May 1980.
- Computer & Video Games issue 1, November 1981, pp. 22–23: Sinclair ZX81 advertisement (March 1981 launch, £69.95 built, £49.95 kit, “over 50,000 in the first 3 months”).
- Alessandro Grussu, Spectrumpedia, volume 1, p. 20: the ZX81’s kit and assembled prices against “almost USD 300” for the VIC-20.
- Sinclair User issue 2, May 1982: Timex appointed to build the ZX81, and production at Dundee rising from 10,000 to 80,000 units a month. Sinclair User issue 9, December 1982: Timex and Thorn-EMI making Spectrums. Spectrum prices and launch as given in the ZX Spectrum entry and its sources.
- Acorn User issue 6, January 1983, pp. 28–29: the £9 million primary schools scheme. Robin Bradbeer, Peter De Bono and Peter Laurie, The Computer Book (BBC, 1982): the Computer Literacy Project and The Computer Programme. BBC Micro prices as given in the BBC Micro entry.
- C16/Plus 4 Handbook volume 2 issue 2, August 1987, p. 2: editorial reporting the Meal survey (18% of homes, 4 million).
- Sinclair User issue 28, July 1984, pp. 51–53: Ocean’s advert for programs and Christian Urquhart.
- Sinclair User issue 23, February 1984, editorial: “promote the programmers as well as the programs”; the recording-contract comparison.
- Sinclair User issue 41, August 1985, pp. 51–54: Clare Edgeley, “Programs for Profit” (Mastertronic’s 200 submissions a month; the costing of a £6.95 game).
- ZZAP!64 issue 13, May 1986, pp. 100–103: Ocean’s programmers under contract.
- Sinclair User issue 34, January 1985, p. 85: Activision Ghostbusters advertisement (the list of chains).
- Sinclair User issue 27, June 1984: Mastertronic’s £1.99 launch and 100,000 orders in its first week. ACE, 1990: Mastertronic’s outlets, as cited in the Mastertronic entry.
- CRASH issue 1, February 1984, pp. 5 and 9: Newsfield of Ludlow. Launch dates of the other magazines as given in their Vault entries.
- Sinclair User issue 43, October 1985, p. 108: profile of Hewson Consultants.
- CRASH issue 51, April 1988, pp. 35–38: Roger Kean on Ultimate (fourteen hits, 93% average).
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984, p. 90: Wanted: Monty Mole on the national news on 25 July 1984, and the Scargill caricature. The coal-stealing mole as described in the Gremlin Graphics entry.
- CRASH issue 12, Christmas 1984, pp. 60–63: Roger Kean, “The Biggest Commercial Break of Them All” (Imagine’s staff, liquidation and the BBC documentary).
- Edge issue 76, October 1999, pp. 74 onwards: “Silicon Valley, UK” (about 300 developers in Guildford).
- Edge issue 31, April 1996: Sony’s purchase of Psygnosis in June 1993; WipEout. Edge issue 71, May 1999: “Infogrames gobbles up Gremlin”. Edge issue 110, May 2002: “DMA (now Rockstar)”. The other acquisitions as given in the company entries linked above and their sources.
- Zzap!64 issue 73, May 1991, p. 6: Hewson’s receivership.
- Retro Gamer issue 24, 2006, p. 26: Gremlin’s Sheffield studio closed in 2003, with many staff moving to Sumo Digital.
- Edge issue 250, February 2013: pp. 64–74, the studio list (founding years and countries); p. 26, news panel on the tax relief (“Culturally British”, “Touché, Canada?”).
- Wireframe issue 14, May 2019, p. 50: Frontier Developments, “Braben’s company set up in 1994”. Wireframe issue 38, May 2020, p. 21: “Cambridge-based Frontier Developments”.
- HM Government, “Video games tax relief passes final hurdle”, press release, 27 March 2014 (web): relief from 1 April 2014, 25% payable credit, qualification through the cultural test only. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/video-games-tax-relief-passes-final-hurdle
- HM Revenue & Customs, “Claiming Video Games Expenditure Credits for Corporation Tax” (web): expenditure from 1 January 2024, 34% rate, games certified as British. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-video-games-expenditure-credits-for-corporation-tax ; The Cultural Test (Video Games) Regulations 2014 (web): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1958/made
- Codemasters’ sale to Electronic Arts in February 2021, as given in the Codemasters entry.