IT’S one of the fastest growing industries in the world, and set to be the largest market in Europe in three years time.

Reflecting on how he’s grabbed a huge slice of the pie, Holmes Chapel publisher Anthony Marks told Weekend about his work on some of the top video games being released, including the much-anticipated Xbox exclusive Sea of Thieves.

Anthony’s company Iron Gut Publishing recently signed a European-wide license with Rare Games, studio owned by Microsoft for the release of the swashbuckling pirate adventure.

Sea of Thieves is an online multiplayer game and has been frequently cited as one of the most anticipated games of 2018, due to its unique gameplay features and its distinctive art style.

The game is scheduled for release on March 20, and despite never working on a new release before, the opportunity for Iron Gut Publishing to work on the title was too good to miss.

Anthony said: “When we saw the beautiful artwork the team at Rare had produced – the passion that has gone into creating an immersive world that will knock the players’ socks off –we knew this is something we would want to be involved with from the very start. They put so much time and effort into making this game and creating something so special.”

The game is built around traversal of an open world map with a crew of other players.

Anthony added: “It’s all multiplayer, so when you’re on that ship you have to work with your friends to get the ship where you want to go.”

Huge emphasis is placed on teamwork as players must work together on a pirate ship to handle navigation, treasure hunting and combat with other ships also controlled by a team of other players.

The publishing company will be producing limited edition art prints featuring concept artwork from the studio’s in-house art team, treasure maps, playing cards and limited-edition coins.

‘The passion that has gone into creating an immersive world will knock the players’ socks off’

The company has worked with leading game developers before such as Sega and Capcom but these have been purely for retro titles such as Street Fighter and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Anthony said: “We wanted Street Fighter because I grew up playing it every day and that celebrated its 30th anniversary recently and Sonic has only just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

“Normally we don’t work with new game releases, we stick with the retro titles. I think this is the exception for us. There’s just something special about Sea of Thieves.

“The game is due out March 20, and we joined quite late in the day. You would have thought they would be so busy pushing the finishing touches to everything but that hasn’t been the case.

“They bend over backwards for us, they do come back and give us feedback and they do take time out of the day to reply to us.

“I went down to London to meet some of the artists and people who designed the game and they’re just so passionate about it and that got me more interested in it.”

Rare games hold a prestigious reputation in the video game industry, mostly due to iconic releases on the Nintendo 64 such as Goldeneye 007 – which saw them win the BAFTA for ‘Best UK Developer’ – and several games in the Donkey Kong franchise.

Sea of Thieves is released on Xbox One and Windows on March 20. For more information about Iron Gut Publishing visit irongutpublishing.com