Gamasutra writes:
"The United Kingdom is a difficult place do do business, said Codemasters managing director Rod Cousens, facing expensive labor, a talent scarcity and competitive subsidies from overseas. But during his talk at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Cousens defended the UK development community.
"High labor rates are nullified by creativity and quality," Cousens said. "It's all relative, but there is a real aspect of this that you can't put a price on, and that is creativity."
According to Cousens, the UK games industry became important on a global scale when Gridrunner on the Commodore 64 made it to number one on the U.S. video game charts back in 1983.
Cousens said that, when he once asked an American about the strengths of UK game design, the American placed it on the fact the market was once dominated by old home computers like the BBC Micro, and that UK design benefited from the challenge of working with those limitations.
"It heralded a rich creativity from the UK that resonated across the world, continued through Elite, Tomb Raider, Singstar, GTA... even Apple have been strongly influenced by UK design," said Cousens."
