The latest James Bond adventure is No. 1 at last week's British video-games chart. The Economist magazine makes the non-unique argument that this as an example of how the once-separate worlds of movies and games have become intertwined as even famous film actors now voice their characters in games too. Animators, artists and model-makers move freely between the two worlds; the same companies produce trailers both for games and for films. People in the booming games business are fond of pointing out that worldwide games sales, at around $20 billion a year, now exceed movie box-office revenues. The typical games budget is now $5m-8m. Where tie-in games used to be an afterthought, they are now integrated into the film-making process from the start. Activision's game "True Crime", for example, released last November, raked in $100m in its first month. Only two films released that month earned as much and both cost far more to make.

aimhi spoke with the man responsible for the Bond video game hit over lunch several months ago. Scott Bayless, executive producer at the US$2.5 billion games company Electronic Arts, was introduced to aimhi via one of our Californian network contacts. One of the subjects of discussion was the criteria that the Highlands & Islands had to meet in order for the region to be an attractive destination for an Electronic Arts cluster. In this day of technology-driven mobility, the remoteness of the Highlands is a non-issue when it comes to being an important 'spoke' of the games industry. In fact, the sheer natural beauty is in many ways a big asset when it comes to attracting the finicky 'quality of life driven' top-drawer programmers and designers who build the game. The challenge that Scott threw to the Highlands & Islands was this: 'Show me six world-class programmers who are living in, or willing to move to the north of Scotland, and we can start serious discussions'.

This is not a state that can happen overnight, but neither is this only possible in the long run. In the last month, aimhi has been getting enquiries from some high calibre games developers already here (and some from the central belt and beyond) about collaboration towards increasing the intensity of games work up here. With some perseverance and the proper resource allocation, there is no reason why we won't see a viable and recognisable games industry up and running in this region within the next couple years. This would undeniably be a high value added get for the industry, as even a small team of top class programmers and designers capable of bringing in international work locally could inject somewhere in the region of £500,000-£1,000,000 into the local economy.