15 Feb, 2011
I can remember exactly what I was doing on this day twenty years ago. Cross legged on the floor in front of my knock-off Commodore Amiga (we couldn’t afford a computer desk), I was impatiently waiting for my newest game to load: Lemmings. Within minutes (minus the four or five it took for the first level to load) I was completely immersed in what would become one of my favourite childhood video games and is now available on 28 systems including Atari Lynx and ST, Nintendo’s NES, Game Boy, PlayStation 2 and 3 and Windows Mobile.
Lemmings is also renowned as one of the UK’s first global blockbusters, topping 55,000 copies on its first day, and going onto pull in over 15 million sales. The game is also heralded as being the predecessor of the modern real-time strategy video game genre, for introducing the ‘indirect-control’ concept, an element now common in many RTS games.
To celebrate the anniversary games giant, Dave Jones was yesterday joined by industry veterans, Gary Timmons, Mike Dailly and Russell Kay to talk to audiences about the conception of the much loved game, and to unveil a plaque at the original DMA office in Dundee.
Gary Timmons, co-designer and animator of Lemmings, said, “Initially I just wanted to get the original team together again to mark the 20th anniversary of the launch of Lemmings on 14th February 1991. However, as the game is so significant to the computer games industry in Dundee, the idea snowballed into a wider set of events including talks, exhibition of Lemmings items and a commemorative ceremony to mark the location of DMA Design’s first offices in the Nethergate, where it all started.”
The event follows this week’s launch of a new report on Scotland’s games industry, which gives “compelling arguments for tax relief” after a Labour government proposal for a games industry tax break was cancelled by the coalition government in June 2010. The report cited the fact that the sector operated in an uneven international playing field, disadvantaged by subsidies from governments overseas, notably France and Canada, and cheaper labour markets elsewhere. Video games development is currently worth about £30m to the Scottish economy although the market is thought to be worth more than £55bn worldwide. Dundee, which plays a key part in the sector, is home to about 15 design companies.
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