Top Russian nuclear scientists hit UK games show

Top Russian nuclear scientists set up their pitch at the European Games Network in London's Docklands and pulled in some mobile operators.

Mark Allington, business manager at AEA Technology and adviser to the Russian team, said: "They had some mathematically-based time-waster games and that attracted the interest of the mobile companies. They've also pulled in another 20 to 30 potential partners, which is good."

The scientists come from three of Russia's closed nuclear cites (CNC) which, in the cold war era, were run somewhat along the lines of luxury open prisons for the whole family. They were brought here as part of the government's CNC programme designed to provide employment for Russian scientists and hence stop the spread of WMD.

The Russians were mainly selling their programming skills and had few actual products. This put off the majority of dealers and distributors but developers had a keen interest according to Allington.

He said: "Since the test ban treaty, the Russians have had to simulate nuclear explosions. And they had to do it on poor quality, low processing-speed machines, so they developed a lot of short cuts. They are very good at solving problems in physics particularly dealing with shapes.

"One of the British developers is having problems with a train simulation, particularly the shapes of the train and of the terrain that it goes through. He was very interested. And their techniques will be very good for modelling human bodies and how they move."

Allington thinks that the Russian expertise in the most efficient use of memory and processing speed will also be attractive to games developers and their generally high skills in mathematical modelling will fill a gap for them.

The Russians have an unpolished tank-driving game likely to appeal to boy soldiers of all ages and, of course, they've already simulated all those nukes for any Armageddon imitation.

The European Games Network exhibition finishes tomorrow.