Find out how a small computer shop in Liverpool became the genesis for a computer gaming revolution that swept the entire country and later affected the world.

One of the best places to learn how to design video games is in the UK, and its impact on gaming as a whole is outsized and often underestimated.

The British computer game is one of the biggest in Europe, with 2000 businesses worth £6 billion. This means that a fifth of all games sold in the UK are developed here, with companies such as Sumo Digital (Outrun 2006), Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice), Jagex (Runescape), Rockstar North (Grand Theft Auto) and Team 17, amongst many others.

One of the most interesting aspects of this billion-pound industry is that it can be traced back to a tiny computer shop in Liverpool in the late 1970s that formed the genesis of everything we see today.

The shop was Microdigital, founded by Bruce Everiss in 1979 as a hub for technology enthusiasts and young coders alike. Very quickly, it would form a community around it in Liverpool, which itself led to the creation of multiple influential early game studios.

The first of these was Bug Byte, set up by several former employees and customers of Microdigital and best known for publishing Matthew Smith’s Manic Miner, the game that arguably established the British computer game scene as a legitimate and lucrative industry.

David Lawson and Mark Butler would then establish Imagine Software, an even bigger company that became famous for its stratospheric rise and highly publicised downfall captured on BBC cameras.

Imagine were trailblazers both in terms of their games, which included the innovative likes of flight simulator Zzoom, real-time strategy game Stonkers, adventure game Alchemist and teddy bear tidying simulator Ah Diddums.

The downfall of Imagine led to an explosion in the market, creating companies such as Denton Designs and later Psygnosis, the latter of which becoming one of the biggest, most successful and most important contributors to the widespread and long-lasting success of the video game industry.

The rise of Microdigital and Bug Byte also inspired the opening of other similar gaming shops that created regional gaming scenes in places such as Manchester (Ocean Software), Sheffield (Gremlin Graphics) and Birmingham (US Gold).