Behind the scenes with Dundee's mobile gaming cluster

Like many other industries – think high-tech in Silicon Valley, doctors in Harley Street or diamond sellers in Amsterdam – game developers like to cluster together. Due to a mixture of geographical inertia and the density of trained employees available for start-ups, two examples in the UK include the Guildford scene that was started by Bullfrog and carried on by EA, and the Warks triangle of Codemasters, Blitz and Rare.

When it comes to mobile developers, one of the emerging hotspots is Dundee. Surprising it may seem, there have always been plenty of game makers tucked away on the side of the Tay river. In the past, original GTA developer DMA Design was the main studio, although others such as Visual Sciences and Vis also flourished (for a time).

Those larger companies eventually went through hard times, though. DMA split into the Edinburgh-based Rockstar North and Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds, while Vis and Visual Sciences went bust. And it was this creative chaos that, in part, set up Dundee's current mobile scene.

Cue a trip up north for Pocket Gamer.

Perhaps what's most significant about the scene is that all four of the companies visited are different in terms of size, the types of games they want to make and even staff personalities.

Perhaps best known are the lads of Dynamo Games. The studio behind Championship Manager (they're already on their fourth iteration) was set up by programming graduates from Dundee University. Now they're branching out with some licensed games such as Countdown and The Crystal Maze. They're also bursting to tell everyone about their first original game, due out in summer 2008, but can't yet.

"The mobile market is so big, I don't see the companies here treading on each others' toes," believes Dynamo's Stuart Reid. "If a company in Dundee does well, it's great because when you go to a publisher, you can say, 'We're from Dundee and these are the other mobile developers in Dundee.'"

Although less well known, the largest mobile developer in Dundee is actually CobraMobile. It's worked on plenty of licences, including Sensible Soccer Skillz and Carol Vorderman's Mind Aerobics. Its most recent release was puzzler Stuck!, which impressively was first out in Japan and is coming to Europe in 2008. The company has big plans for the future, with a push on 3D games for Symbian and BREW devices, as well as a cross-platform casual philosophy taking concepts onto mobile and PC.

"We're trying to stay ahead of where the market is going," reckons MD Mark Ettle. "Casual Java games will always be there, mobile games are becoming more casual, so we need to be able to cover that area and diversify into the high-end market, as well as offering publishers the option of PC versions of our games. Actually, we're finding a lot of interest in the 3D space at the moment. It's not as crowded as Java so there's more room for original content."

One company with excellent gaming pedigree is Tag Games. Its staff have worked on million-selling console games such as GTA and State of Emergency, as well as a considerable number of mobile games – MD Paul Farley was I-Play's chief designer. The developer is attempting to mix up its workload with licensed products and is currently doing the mobile version of huge casual PC hit, Granny in Paradise, as well as cooking up more original IPs for 2008.

"We want to focus on gameplay," Farley explains. "As a company we have to be different and show great attention to detail and always make sure our games are fun."

The final studio in our whistle-stop tour was Digital Goldfish. The youngest, and smallest, of Dundee's mobile developers, it's another studio set up by students (in this case they're from the famous games courses of the University of Abertay Dundee). Its only mobile game released to date was a baby simulator, but, once again, there's plenty of ambition on display, with several concepts being worked on. "We've been through a steep learning curve but we're confident about the future," reckons MD David Hamilton.

So that's a brief overview of what to expect over the next week or so as Pocket Gamer, eschewing kilt and haggis (though a drop of single malt would be nice), runs detailed interviews with each of the four companies: where they came from, what they're working on, and where they see the mobile gaming industry going.

Consider it a slice of Hootenanny come early.