Pittsburgh is the front-runner to become the U.S. headquarters location for a British videogame developer looking to expand its operations abroad.

Eutechnyx, the driving force behind such games as "Big Mutha Truckers" and "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift," is "awfully close" to settling on Pittsburgh after considering Montreal and Atlanta, said Todd Eckert, the local movie producer who has been tapped to head the company's U.S. operations.

Mr. Eckert, best known for "Control," the biopic about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, said the primary attraction of Pittsburgh was the talent being developed at local universities.

"If any company in game development is going to be successful, it is going to be so because of talent," he said, citing Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center as a particular draw. "I'd be in England or wherever, and when I'd say that I was from Pittsburgh, someone would say to me, 'Do you know about the Entertainment Technology Center? It's really amazing.' "

Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, said game developers tend to spring up in geographic clusters that create "a local ecosystem of activity," with about half of the industry's workforce being in California. While Eutechnyx is the first gaming company that he knows of moving into Pittsburgh, he said "there's a nice little hub of activity happening in the city."

Mr. Eckert said Eutechnyx looks to hire 12 programmers right away -- the company is interviewing candidates this week -- and that the Pittsburgh outpost eventually will have between 50 and 100 employees.

As for office space, he said Eutechnyx has focused its search on the Downtown area, based on the belief that their programmers will be best served by an urban environment.

"People need to be able to walk out their front door and see whatever to kind of jog their imaginations," he said. "An office park would not fulfill that."

Mr. Eckert was neither born nor raised in Pittsburgh, but developed a strong connection to the city through his grandmother, "a deep Pittsburgher," and has lived here since 2001. He said getting Pittsburgh on to the short list of cities to be considered was a straightforward matter.

"I made this presentation to the board, and they said, 'OK.'"

He said Pittsburgh's location worked in its favor -- California was out of the running because of the eight-hour time difference between there and Eutechnyx's home in Newcastle.

The move comes at a time of sea changes in the industry. A Redwood City, Calif.-based gaming company, Trion World Network, recently inked a deal with the Sci Fi Channel cable network to co-produce a franchise that will be both television series and a massive multiplayer game on the Internet. The game-plus-show, not yet titled, is scheduled for launch in summer 2010.

Meanwhile, Activision and Vivendi are close to closing a merger announced in December, in an attempt to unseat Electronic Arts as the world's largest independent game publisher. Activision is known for its console games, scoring big with "Guitar Hero," while Vivendi Games has mastered the world of online games with offerings such as "World of Warcraft." For 2007, the companies boasted estimated revenues totaling $3.8 billion.

Electronic Arts is not resting on its laurels, either. Since February, the company has been attempting a hostile takeover of TakeTwo Interactive Software Inc., the publisher of the "Grand Theft Auto" game franchise. The newest addition to the series, "Grand Theft Auto IV," has raked in more than $500 million since its April 29 launch.

Compared to all of those companies, Eutechnyx is a small player, with $12 million in revenues in 2007. For many private companies that size, being acquired by an Electronic Arts or an Activision might be a fantasy come true, but Mr. Eckert said Eutechnyx is, and will remain, "fiercely independent."

Established as Zeppelin Games in 1987, when it created games for Commodore 64 and Atari XL systems, the company produced more than 250 games in its first three years. Since then, the company has grown with the industry, developing games for new platforms as they emerged -- Sega and Nintendo consoles, the Sony PlayStation, Microsoft's Xbox -- as well as continuing to provide games for personal computers.

Mr. Eckert sees video games as the next stage in the evolution of entertainment. In Eutechnyx's latest creation, "Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli," due out in August from Activision, he said the graphics are so advanced that individual raindrops form their own rivulets as they slide down windshields.

"To me, games are the future," he said. "Games are the most exciting medium in the world right now. It's all the beauty of film, with the chance to be a participant."