The Art House

We normally have about 40 people in the Glasgow studio, with a mixture of full time and freelance. Predominantly most of those roles are on the creative and production sides; we have quite a small amount of support and operations roles.

I think one of the thing that mirrors pretty closely with game development is that we find identifying and retaining talent is always a challenge in such a new industry. It's the same with visual effects and CG - finding good people and keeping them there is hard, and sometimes it's hard to persuade people to go to Glasgow, but sometimes people want to move on, out of London or wherever and go somewhere new.

We try and have a mix of bringing through recent graduates into the studio as well as looking for much more experienced people - and we look everywhere, whether that's the videogames industry, or the film and TV industries, because we're not exclusive to videogames so we can cast our net a bit wider.

We're also pretty international - I think last year we had 13 different nationalities working for us, so it's a necessity that we cast our net wide.

I think the process is the same, but sometimes the relationship is slightly different. I think the movie, TV or commercial guys are used to hiring experts to come in to do a specific job they need, and it's part of the production process. It's expected that's going to happen - production companies are there to bring the right people together in a jigsaw that's going to create the perfect picture.

But the videogames industry tends to be the flipside of that, where the guys on the publishing or development sides are trying to have as much resource under their own roof as possible - so you end up with a slightly different relationship. I'd be the same, I think - people want to look after their baby and make sure they only work with people that respect it, and are going to do the absolute best they can.

I don't know if it's necessarily frustrating; maybe challenging would be a better way to put it. You need to be aware that somehow or other you've got to get inside the head of somebody that's worked with an idea for as long as two years, so you've got to try and get up to speed with the story, the characters and the people behind the creative side of the development. That's hard to do.

I think it has. For donkey's years in the games press people have been talking about the film production model, and while that's never realised itself in the same way that people make feature films, there's a perception that hiring the best people to do certain things is the way to go - and that's generated some of the more exciting partnerships for various things in games.

Maybe that's hiring excellent ad agencies to create daring TV commercials for the games, or whether it's working with illustrators or art directors that create unique visual styles for games that you've not seen before. But it's definitely easier, for sure.

It's a difficult one - everybody wants a level playing field, but I don't think there ever is a level playing field. If you take film in the UK, it's doing really well - Pinewood and the other studios are always busy, the visual effects industry is growing off the back of that, and there's a benefit, no doubt.

But at the same time you can look at various VFX companies in California, in Los Angeles, and they're actually closing because they can't compete with the UK. They're not on a level playing field - so I don't think you can ever have that.

The big thing for me is that if the games industry can get tax breaks, can we guarantee that it will make a difference to the UK's industry - and the jobs and companies that already exist there? That it's not just an opportunity for Big Corporation X to come in and set up a big studio just to get a very nice tax break.

From our point of view, the best thing would be that it gave benefits to the established companies - or those that were about to start up - and if it really benefits the UK then we'd see the impact of that.

We've expanded and gone more international with our client base because of what's been happening in the UK games industry - it's disappointing that there are a lot of companies that have gotten into trouble. From our point of view, to grow our business and sustain what we want to do in games we've had to look to the US and Europe for new clients and opportunities.

The biggest change for me is that I see a general expectation that games are competing with all other entertainment forms - not just other games. Films, DVDs, online or whatever. That's why you see the really big games create outstanding TV commercials - to make a big impact in the same way a feature film would.

The other thing that's changed is that content is being created for areas that you wouldn't necessarily expect. We worked with Under Siege, a PSN game that's going to be coming out - I wouldn't normally expect a PSN game to have a pretty heavy-hitting, high-end trailer, but the guys behind that game have decided that's a strategy that can pay off and raise the profile of their game.

As the types of games, and the delivery method of those games change, so does the marketing. Everybody needs to market their game, but it's a question of how that's done. I'm not saying everyone needs a kick-ass trailer, but there's definitely an opportunity.