The games industry is warning that the UK could lose one of its greatest creative assets without more government support, as cheaper and more plentiful labour in other countriescould temptthem to relocate abroad.
Although the biggest game of the year - Grand Theft Auto IV - was developed in Edinburgh, MPs are more often found joining tabloid condemnation of the violent game than celebrating its contribution to the economy.
The big guns of the UK games industry believe that this attitude threatens its competitiveness in the face of tantalising tax breaks and better training abroad, led by Montreal, Canada.
Last month saw the launch of the Games Up campaign, with 15 companies calling for tax breaks and greater government support on education.
Ian Livingstone, a campaign spokesman and creative director at Eidos, the Tomb Raider developer acquired by SCi Entertainment, says the UK has not kept up as countries such as France, Singapore, Australia and the US have mimicked Montreal's tactics. SCi, still recovering from troubles of its own making, is moving many developers to Canada, the US and elsewhere.
"The UK is the most expensive place to develop games in the world today," says Rick Gibson, co-founder of Games Investor Consulting, a backer of the Games Up campaign. "Games developers are having to make sensible decisions about where to put millions of pounds of investment."
That risks squandering not only the industry's proud heritage, but a lucrative revenue stream: UK games generated almost £4bn between 2006 and 2008, according to Games Investor Consulting. The consequences are already being felt - half the UK's independent developers disappeared between 2000 and 2006, according to GIC.
Yet the UK development community is still worldrenowned for its novel, creative titles such as Buzz , a virtual quiz show by Relentless; Crackdown , Realtime Worlds' racing game; and Little Big Planet on PlayStation3, a new type of game emphasising community, creativity and exploration in its virtual world - a long way from the ultra-violent stereotype.
"In the UK the talent in breadth and depth is unquestionably the best in the world," says Chris Lee, a director and co-founder of Guildford-based Media Molecule, which is developing Little Big Planet . "We have more original properties developed here per capita and per studio than anywhere else in the world. North America has some incredibly prestigious studios but if you look deeper you'll find a lot of Brits." Few other countries can boast all four disciplines of design, programming, art and production, he adds.
Even so, Mr Lee says, the lack of government support "is starting to have consequences on our commercial decisions. It's becoming more and more inevitable that you go where it commercially makes sense".
"We're concerned for the medium- to long-term," says Jason Kingsley, co-founder of Rebellion, which has made games based on The Simpsons , Star Wars and Harry Potter . "How are people going to get trained on the job if there are only a handful of developers where they can get trained in the UK?"
Mr Kingsley says he has been "cold-called on a fairly regular basis" by countries trying to lure him away from the UK. "Ultimately they may persuade me it's the best way to go, but I'd hate to think that."
Codemasters, a 20-year-old developer and publisher, employs 500 developers in Warwickshire, but Chris Deering, chairman, says it could soon become hard to justify further UK expansion. "When the pool of talent is being sucked out of the country, the costs and hassles of being concentrated here become pretty intense."
Mr Livingstone of Eidos sums up the industry's predicament: "We're saying: 'Do you fix the roof when it's raining?' Right now we're at the peak for games development in the UK. The solution is not going to happen overnight but if we don't act now the industry won't exist in 10 years' time."
