Such was Liverpool's dominance of the racing genre in the late 1990s and early 2000s that anyone visiting the city at might have expected to see Michael Schumacher charging down The Strand in a Ferrari.

Some of console's biggest ever racing franchises – Wipeout, Project Gotham Racing and numerous Formula One releases – were conceived and developed by studios that made Liverpool their home.

It was a chapter in Liverpool's history that, from a development perspective, rivalled (or perhaps even topped) that of Manchester's own heyday a decade or so before.

What makes the supposed decline in major game development all the more painful for those still based in Liverpool, however, is just how recent this period of prosperity was.

Pocket Gamer has watched on as, during the last few years, the city's leading lights switched off one by one, with much of the talent turning to mobile and setting up fresh studios of their own.

As a result, Merseyside has quietly become a hive of indie startups, with Lucid Games – founded by former Bizarre Creations staff – one of the most prominent.

After the launch of Lucid's first mobile racing game, 2K Drive, we spoke to founder, Nick Davies about the recent evolution of Liverpool's development scene.

'It's like coming out into a different world'

"When we were in a big studio we were quite insular because we were wrapped up in big projects - we didn't get to interact much with different studios," Davies tells us.

"Now there are a lot more small to mid sized studios so the scene actually feels bigger because we're out and about more often meeting other people.

"I've probably met more people in the last two and a half years since Lucid started than I ever met in six or seven years at Bizarre Creations. It's like coming out into a different world."

Nick Davies

It might be like a different world, but the same old rivalries remain.

Liverpool has always been in competition with the city at the other end of the M62 motorway, Manchester. Not just in terms of games development, either, but rather every element you can think of – music and sport probably the most prominent.

Manchester has certainly had the edge in football since the 1990s, but few would deny that Liverpool has dominated the North West's gaming landscape in recent years. Both cities have healthy independent scenes today, but Davies argues that Liverpool's history of larger studios makes a big difference.

"Liverpool is different [to Manchester] because we had some big studios. If you look at the average age of developers at Bizarre, there were almost no 18 or 19 year old kids," Davies claims.

"I'm 37 and I had ties here as did many of the other guys, so when a big studio closes people don't disappear and move to different cities. When Bizarre and Studio Liverpool closed, people didn't want to move away so it was natural for people to stay and form new studios."

'We could never have done 2K Drive on our own'

Davies previous work at Bizarre Creations was dominated by the demands of big studios, most famously by Microsoft with Project Gotham Racing and then by Activision with the James Bond license.

Lucid Games, however, has no intention of growing into a 200 person plus studio. Independence and small size has offered huge improvements for Davies and his team.

"We're at a size now that we're comfortable with and we don't really want to get any bigger than that. We've been through the experience of working in a 200 or 250 man studio," says Davies.

"It's difficult to be flexible and jump onto new trends [in a big studio]. On the flipside, when you're very small it's very difficult to keep up with the pace of development, especially on mobile where the production values creep up year on year."

This rise in production values is something that Lucid Games has taken advantage of in a big way.

Using the team's experience on console, it pushed current mobile hardware to its limit with 2K Drive, but as the game's title suggests, this was impossible to achieve without the backing of publisher funding.

2K Drive

Working with 2K Games helped Lucid to maintain the flexibility of its small team, but with the funding required to achieve incredible graphics.

"Because we were used to console we had some big concepts that were impossible for an independent studio to fund," adds Davies.

"We could never have done 2K Drive on our own because of the amount of content, circuits and cars. It was impossible to do that independently unless we found some Russian oligarch to back us!"

Anti Activision?

Some commentators were surprised Lucid moved to work with a big publisher so soon after the staff's recent history at Bizarre Creations, which was controversially dissolved by Activision. Davies explained the decision to us.

"We are still doing small projects with our own IP that we can fund internally," Davies tells us.

"At the start we had just lost our jobs so nothing was off the table. Contrary to what some people think, nobody left Bizarre with hatred towards large publishers or Activision in particular. It was just the nature of the business. There was no personal acrimony. There was no sense of 'I'd never get back in with a big publisher'."

Davies also says that working with a publisher, but not being owned by them, makes a huge difference to the working relationship.

"Not being owned by a publisher is very different to being funded by one. We have someone with marketing experience behind us and the game is funded but we are still independent and can work on other things too, so it's the best of both worlds," argues Davies.

"There's a risk with your own IP that it won't take off but the flipside is that you're very passionate about it. Having a publisher onboard for other projects maintains the stability of the studio. I would be surprised if any studio has a mantra of I will use a publisher or I won't use a publisher."

Destiny

Working with a big publisher seems to go against what some people might argue is the real spirit of modern independent game development.

Lucid Games has seen a rift emerging between developers who will fight, sometimes aggressively, to keep their "indie" label and branding, and small studios who just want their games to speak for themselves and aren't interested in labelling themselves as indie or anything else.

"People struggle to define what independent is. For me it's about making your own decisions and you're in charge of your destiny," argues Davies .

"We're a 30 man studio and we've been funded for one game by a publisher. Some people would say that isn't independent. But the fact that it was our choice of publisher, our game idea and we still work on our own other projects, that makes us independent. I think that's the only thing that defines it."

Liverpool's Albert Docks

But if developers aren't debating who qualifies as an indie or not, it appears plenty in the North West are also weighing up the pros and cons of going mobile.

In our look at the development scene in Manchester, local outfit White Paper Games was very sceptical about the "gold rush" of mobile gaming and the difficulties of finding an audience.

For Liverpool's Lucid Games, understanding your costs is the key to mobile development and Davies argues that quality will always stand out on the app stores.

"The mobile space is tricky. It always has been. The key is understanding your market and your costs," says Davies.

"You can still take risks on mobile as long as you understand your costs and are aware that your game might not do so well. You can find a niche area where you can be a success. Being with a publisher doesn't guarantee that you will get noticed either.

"We've made a game with a publisher and one independently and both have been featured by Apple in some way. It's a bit of a gamble whichever way you go."

Davies also believes that the 'mobile gold rush' is now being rerunon Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, but that quality will eventually win in these new market opportunities too.

"If some new avenue comes up the first few people make a lot of money and then you get new people trying and failing. After that, you just get quality succeeding," he says.

"That's the way it will go with Kickstarter and Greenlight. You might get lucky or be in the right space, then there will be a lot people following on hoping to make a quick buck and then things settle down and quality titles stand out."

Educating Merseyside

Despite losing Bizarre Creations and, more recently, Sony Studio Liverpool, it'd be hard to suggest that Liverpool's development doesn't have a bright future thanks to thriving small studios like Lucid Games.

Indeed, Lucid is determined to give something back to the next generation of gaming talent too. The studio is providing support to a fantastic new project taking place 50 yards from its office, a new games development academy, The Studio Liverpool.

"It's a school for 14 to 16 year olds where the whole curriculum is based on games design," Davies tells us.

"There are 170 kids in that school literally 50 yards away from us. We're mentoring some of the students over the next couple of years. It's a really interesting education model where it's tailored to the desires of the pupil rather than the basic subjects.

"It's a huge thing for Liverpool and it's the only thing of it's kind in the UK."

Davies is determined to prove to students and parents that video games and other creative professions are a legitimate, realistic way to make a living.

"Once a month we'll be looking at their projects and giving them feedback and we'll be doing guest lectures," he says.

"We want to show creative industries as a viable way of making a living. We have to look a lot younger than university courses to get people interested in computer science and modules and courses that will support them to get to university level."

Join us on PocketGamer.biz tomorrow as we step out of the North West's big cities to explore Macclesfield in Cheshire – a town that, from a mobile perspective at least, is powered by publishing giant Chillingo.