Criterion names Guildford the "center of UK development"

You may not know it, but some of the industry's biggest titles are developed close to home, that is if home is the south of England.



In recent years the town of Guildford, Surrey has become a hot spot for UK games development, with big console titles like Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet coming from developers based in the country town. Arguably the biggest team working in the region right now is Criterion, who brought us the Burnout series along with last year's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

Developing one of the biggest titles in the biggest entertainment industry in the world is quiet a rare thing for a small UK town, so we caught up with the developer's own Craig Sullivan and Matt Webster to ask what it was like developing AAA titles in Guildford. "It's funny how Guildford's kind of grown as almost the center of the UK development industry," Sullivan said. "Criterion? We've been doing it for years and those things have happened around us I guess."

Webster added: "We've been around for a long time and I've been at Criterion for 14 years now. It's a great thing that the UK's games industry seems to be thriving; there are a lot of good games coming out of the UK and long may it continue. We're just happy to be here."

"I hope people are excited about what's happening with game development in the UK and that we'll see some more positives stories out there about that development," Sullivan concluded.

Like Criterion, we hope to see even bigger and better titles coming out of the UK in the years to come.