Lucid Games, a Baltic Triangle-based company, will find out whether it has won a gaming BAFTA at a prestigious awards ceremony this Thursday.
It follows the success of its latest game, Geometry Wars III: Dimensions, which is up for the ‘Best British Game’ award at the ceremony on the Tobacco Dock in London.
Lucid Games produces cutting edge games and apps and has worked on some of the biggest gaming franchises to come out of the UK in the past 20 years. These include Playstation classic Formula 1 97, BAFTA-winning Project Gotham Racing and blockbusters Blur and James Bond 007: Blood Stone.
The company’s latest project, Geometry Wars III, sees players battle it out as they try to survive against swarms of ever-increasing enemies to score points in an ever changing 3D environment.
Lucid Games Creative Director, Craig Howard, told JMU Journalism: “It’s great to be nominated for a BAFTA. The guys and girls at Lucid Games are all very passionate and brilliant individuals. It’s nice to be recognised for the effort and ingenuity of the work that is put into our games.”
Having suffered many closures of big gaming firms like Bizarre and Sony’s Studio Liverpool, the city’s digital sector has seen better days. But Lucid’s creative director remained hopeful.
He added: “There is definitely a resurgence happening. More independent studios are starting thanks to middleware solutions such as game engines Unity and Unreal that allow games to be created with smaller teams that can fight it out with the big boys of the industry.”
“However, I do not think it will ever be the same as it was before, I think there will be smaller companies, being agile and creative and even working together to deliver titles.”
Lucid’s success reflects a recent government report, released last month, which named Liverpool as a digital technology hub, identifying its industry as one of the fastest growing areas outside of the capital.
Howard added: “There is a lot of gaming heritage in the North West, and the passion that helped create those companies all those years ago still courses through the veins of this region.
“You can see it with the amount of local talent coming from education and also with the way that creative areas such as the Baltic Triangle are becoming hubs for new ideas and creativity.”