Andrew Fish

Nottingham, UK

Software Developer/Writer

Part of the problem is that commercial games now revolve on 3D engines and huge production values. Whereas our generation used to look at the latest Codemasters simulator and say 'I can do better than that', the current youth would have to be extremely arrogant to do so - even if their machine allowed them to write games straight out of the box.

If the games industry wants to nurture talent for the next generation, what they could look at is running competitions for youngsters to write simple games for mobile phones. These games tend to be as simple as those of the Speccy era, but the tools aren't immediately to hand for most kids. Give them a little incentive and you might create a craze with the potential to create vastly more games developers than the speccy age ever generated.