Japan is known for its quirky, offbeat games and a devotion to the role-playing game. America, the pioneer, has a predilection for big action games with plenty of gunplay. This might be a simplification, but these countries have a style and way of doing things that gamers feel they can recognise. So what about the UK? Do we have a distinctive identity in the games we produce, and the games we like to play?

Lara+Croft+was+conceived+in+Derby,+but+Tomb+Raider+is+now+developed+by+Crystal+Dynamics+in+the+US.

Boy+Loves+Girl+rose+from+the+ashes+of+Bizarre+Creations.

Games+like+Revenge+of+the+Mutant+Camels+are+rare+these+days.

Certainly, Britain has created some wildly popular franchises such as Burnout, LittleBigPlanet, Fable, Colin McRae Rally and Total War, not to mention icons such as Lara Croft and the GTA series. But there's been a recent drop in output, with Canada replacing the UK as the world's third-largest video games employer. Now the largest entertainment business in the country, are our games as culturally unique as British film or music?David Darling, founder of Codemasters with his brother Richard, recalls a simpler time. "Back in the '80s", says David, "developers were only producing games and hardware for Britain with machines like the ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32 and the BBC Computer. Games like Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were being produced for the UK market. There were lots of small companies, famous programmers. It's changed a lot, not like a cottage industry anymore."The birth of British gaming was kick-started by Clive Sinclair and his ZX80 home computer, which led to the emergence of a unique style of British game. Tristan Donovan, author of Replay: The History of Video Games, expands: "We're not defined in terms of genre, but there's a certain surrealism that we tend to go for – a weird quirkiness. In the '80s there were loads of very, very bizarre games. People like Jeff Minter, Mel Croucher, Matt Smith and games like Jet Set Willy and Attack of the Mutant Camels. Now it's much more toned down. French games focus on the look and the art. We tend to do it on silly things. GTA reflects that, with its satirical nature. It featured gangsters but invited people to say 'isn't it ridiculous?'"Russell Kay, co-founder of DMA Design, was the original programmer of Lemmings and created Grand Theft Auto. "I do think that British tastes are different, I know mine are. I prefer quirkiness, surrealism, story and humour – while my American friends would rather have realism, cars and guns", says Kay.The UK video game market is still the largest in Europe, sitting alongside Germany at the top of the European pile. But it's still well behind American and Japan in terms of software and hardware sales. "Japanese games are often still distinctly Japanese but they are targeted at the Japanese home market, which is big enough to sustain this. The UK games market is not big enough to support a distinctly 'British' game, whatever that may be," says Karl Hilton, formerly of Free Radical (developer of Timesplitters), now Managing Director of Crytek UK.Jeff Minter was a name that often came up when discussing British games with veteran developers. A bit of a cult figure in the industry, the 'Yak' started coding games in his teens. He understands the difficulty of working at a large studio: "It's very difficult for the big software houses to try anything that's too quirky or offbeat, they're more or less obliged to follow already successful formulae," he says.But the rise of downloadable games and the app market has generated new opportunities. App developers have sprung up across the country. "There are gaming hubs developing in Liverpool, Dundee and Leamington Spa. It's so easy to start writing games for these mobile devices. All you really need is a $99 license from Apple and you're off," says David Crookes, curator of 'Videogame Nation', a 2009 exhibition of British gaming history. (David Darling, after leaving Codemasters, eventually set up Kwalee to explore the potential of mobile gaming.)Out of the ashes of Bizarre Creations (a British developer that folded in 2011), arose four independent studios, all focused on mobile games. One of them, Grubby Hands, comprises just one man – former senior programmer at Bizarre, Dr. Danny Pearce. Taking on the role of programmer, games designer, artist and animator, his games David Haye's Knockout and Boy Loves Girl have gone on to great success.Without the monetary risk attached to console games, app developers are freer to experiment. Already, games such as Grubby Hand's Boy Loves Girl feature some of the quirkiness that was common 30 years ago during the Spectrum era, where the one-man designers were heavily influenced by Monty Python and the things they grew up with. "There was a lot of situational stuff, references to things going on at the time – politics and popular culture which got folded into the games. Myself, I did The Revenge of the Mutant Camels, which was very Python-esque", says Minter.This market is not without its problems, and success in this field is wildly unpredictable. "At the moment, it's a bit random really," explains Minter. "Whether you succeed seems to be almost a lottery. I hope that the market matures and there's more discoverability there. There needs to be a bit more middle ground so that people could actually make a career out of iOS development".Dr. Pearce agrees: "Unfortunately, this is true. The AppStore economy is very top-heavy, the top 1% of apps probably make 99% of the money. This is due to the way that apps are discovered on the device, it can be very difficult for a user to find an app that isn't in the Top 100 or featured by Apple."Despite the pressure of being solely responsible for the success of his studio, Dr. Pearce enjoys the freedom, "I think smaller teams or one-man studios work well because it's easy to maintain a consistent vision of the game you're creating. Having low overheads is a huge bonus and allows room to take more risks, try things you haven't done before and create something just because you feel passionate about doing so. The new mobile devices have given us a platform to return to the gaming roots".Whether or not there is a British 'identity' to the games we produce, talent is obviously key. Russell Kay is busy promoting GameMaker: Studio, a program which offers enthusiasts the tools to quickly make their own app games. David Braben caused a sensation with the release of the Raspberry Pi, a budget computer designed to teach schoolchildren the basics of programming.Realistic shooting games dominate the release schedule of console games, with the variety of genres of even a generation ago now lacking. As the industry has expanded and matured, the range of experiences on offer has actually dwindled. Minter hopes, however, that people will rediscover the creativity and individuality of earlier times, "That was one of the big differences in the 80s, everybody could look at something by Matthew Smith or the Stamper brothers and see that they were just regular guys and that if they could do it then maybe somebody else could do it. There wasn't a big distance between the creators and the consumers, whereas now not everybody could put together a multi-million pound studio and create some huge epic.""But anybody who's interested can make an app."