The Anglo File: Wise Monkey Hopes to Cash In on Video-Game Business

LONDON -- A recent newspaper article about the games publisher Eidos (EIDSY Quote) under the heading "Lara Croft turns respectable and wins City friends" says much about how the European industry has recovered from the disastrous years of 1994 and 1995. A new company called Wise Monkey hopes now to improve the fraught process of funding and developing the games.

Wise Monkey is the brainchild of Steve Hickman and Tony Bourne, former senior managers at Eidos and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (a unit of Japan's Sony (SNE Quote), respectively. Backed by U.K. media investment group Durlacher, Wise Monkey hopes to cash in on the $17 billion annual market for video games by offering movie-style funding and project-management services to developers and publishers.

Hickman sees Wise Monkey as part of the natural progression of an industry that has rebounded from the downturn in the games market in 1994 and 1995, when most publishers in Europe were losing money to a situation where most are actually making money. ...