A set of modest offices above a bank in Dundee does not look a likely venue for the genesis of the next generation of computer games. The unassuming man behind the helm of this quest also looks more suited to work in the NatWest downstairs than at the forefront of Silicon Glen's gaming industry.
But Dave Jones is a big shot in gaming. He's the man who created the notorious Grand Theft Auto, the shoot-em-up game which provoked unrivalled ire in equal measure among the British tabloid press and the American moral majority. Perversely, he also created the gently seductive Lemmings.
Now, though, Mr Jones has his sights on a more ambitious task: getting the people of Europe to ditch their console games. He wants European gamers to emulate their counterparts in Asia, particularly Korea, and play massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs).
MMOGs allow literally thousands of players to take part in the same computer game. They are hugely popular in South Korea, China and other parts of the far east. The games run 24 hours, seven days a week, whether you play or not. They encompass massive areas and require the sort of server that would put Nasa to shame. Typically in the far east 3,000 people will play at any one time. But in Europe they have yet to take off.
"They are still very much a niche market in Europe," says Margaret Robertson, games editor of the Edge magazine. "It's a big niche, mainly for role playing games, but no one has yet taken them into the mass market."
Mr Jones, who owns Dundee-based software developers Real Time Worlds, wants to bring MMOGs to the mass market in Europe. It is one of the boldest - and most potentially lucrative - plans to come from Silicon Glen for some time.
Within two years, he hopes to have thousands European gamers playing his online games simultaneously amid the sort of hype that surrounds online gaming in the far east.
"Gaming is a social experience, going back to board games and cards, but computer game players here have never really experienced that," Mr Jones says. "Video games at the moment are about beating the system, but when you can get lots of people involved it's a whole different scenario."
The seductive benefit of online gaming over console games is interactivity. The game is released on to the web in first version form. Then players - who will pay a monthly subscription of, say, £7 - explore the game and relate their likes and dislikes back to the software developers. The developers can then shape the future of the game.
"We will have a customer service team and a team of dedicated developers working on the game," says Colin Macdonald, studio manager with RTW. "It's the first time we will have had a real link between player and developer."
South Korea is the home of online gaming and accounts for 80% of the world's online gaming market. Console sets, like PS2 and Xbox, so common in Europe, are unknown there. Instead, everyone plays their games online, usually in PC Bangs - a gaming internet cafe - alongside hundreds of other players.
Mr Jones admits he cannot replicate the PC Bang gaming culture in Britain, but he hopes the spread of broadband will dig him out of that hole.
South Korea is one of the most connected countries in the world. But Europe is beginning to catch up: the average broadband penetration in western Europe is between 13% and 15%, compared with just 3% five years ago.
The increase of broadband, and the next generation of games consoles will provide the opening for online gaming in Europe. "With the new systems people are going to be connected from day one, so there is going to be the opportunity from the start-up to play big online games on a mass-market scale," Mr Jones says.
Currently, most of the MMOGs available are role playing games, beloved of men under 24. If RTW is to succeed where some of the biggest game companies have failed, they will have to create a game of much broader appeal.
