Jez San and the Argonauts

IT could be a scene straight out of a Bond film. Instead of the mundane business of typing in a password to log on to his computer, Jez San is having the iris of his eye scanned by a tiny black box beside the huge flat screen on his desk.

'Isn't it great?' he enthuses. 'This one only cost $100, but now I know that it works I'm going to get the more expensive one. The difference is that it will be able to tell if someone has ripped my eye out of its socket.'

The scanner, the latest addition to an extensive collection of gadgets littering his office, is not the only thing that has put San, chief executive of Argonaut Games -Jez San and the Argonauts, geddit? - in a good mood.

San, 35, is still celebrating after receiving an OBE in the New Year Honours List for services to industry. He said his company, which was listed on the stock market as recently as March 2000, had a ' fantastic' Christmas, thanks to designing the Harry Potter PlayStation console game.

It is now on the acquisition trail as well as signing up a vital new licence to make games based on the Lego brand name. His friends joke that now San has the distinction of an OBE, he should be known as Jeremy. 'He's the elder statesman of the industry now,' says one friend.

No one calls him Jeremy and elder statesman is hardly appropriate in a business where the very oldest businessmen and women are only in their fifties. But San has been in the computer games industry for more than half his life.

As a member of key Government advisory panels, he helps stodgy civil servants, who haven't played a computer game since Space Invaders hit British pubs, to understand a sector that is now worth more than the UK film industry. San's honour is a recognition of the enormous creative talent Britain has unwittingly fostered.

In common with most of his competitors, San was an early computer user. 'I was 12 when my dad brought back a TRS-80 (an early forerunner of today's PCs) from the US,' he says. And in common with many other successful programmers, his parents and teachers were far from encouraging at the start.

'Everyone thought it was a terrible influence,' he says. 'I was staying up all night, every night. It's a while now since I've seen the sun rise after working all night, but when I was at school it happened all the time. I was hacking before it was made illegal, but never since. I was getting on to the networks that were the forerunner of the internet.'

But it soon became clear that San was more than just another teenage dabbler. He wrote programs for early computers such as the Amiga, which are still used by enthusiasts.

He is also a talented electronics-engineer, designing the modem used by the BBC computer of the mid-Eighties, and he has the biggest stake in Arc, a listed technology company that demerged from Argonaut before its flotation.

He was only 16 when the money started to roll in. 'Some friends and I wrote a game called Skyline Attack,' he says. 'My share of the profits bought a second-hand Volkswagen Scirocco GTi. Computers have given me a great new car about every 18 months since.'

San started the company early. This was not so much because of his entrepreneurial background but for a more practical reason - 'I was trying to get programming work and no one would take a 16-year-old seriously,' he says. As soon as I printed up business cards, the work rolled in.'

This is to understate the pivotal role San has played. Starting from a Saturday job at Microage Electronics, an early computer shop in Edgware, north London, and less than a mile from where Argonaut now has its offices, San has expanded from being a lone gun to employing 200 people.

'I was lucky that my father was a businessman so I understood business,' he says. 'There are a lot of more talented programmers than me who have done less well because you can never achieve much on your own. I found talented teams to develop games from very early on. That was taking a risk, but it meant we could do much more.'

Inside Argonaut's red brick walls, San has fostered a creative culture. 'We have seven wings and in each wing a team is developing a game,' he says. Outside his office, the team enjoy peace. There is no distracting music and most of the programmers have removed the lights above their workstations.

Argonaut's successes, such as Starfox and Starglider games, attracted the attention of big games publishers, including Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Vivendi. As a result, the firm produced the Harry Potter computer game which was a big seller in the run-up to Christmas.

But recent results have been poor. Argonaut raised £18m from its flotation at the height of the dotcom boom, but last year the company lost £3m on turnover of £4m.

The shares have slumped from a peak of 105p at flotation to 48p, valuing the company at £45m. The value of San's stake has crashed and he has dropped out of various rich lists.

He blames the cyclical nature of the business. 'There is a five-year cycle, which coincides with the introduction of a new generation of consoles,' explains San. 'Last year was the changeover.'

And the future? 'The next few years are going to be brilliant for the industry,' he promises.