In the year 2000, a competition was started up called Dare To Be Digital at Abertay University, for talented students of the university to make a prototype game.
The competition has gotten larger in scope as the years have gone on, with 2001 allowing students to participate from all Scottish Universities and Colleges of Art.
2005 was where the competition started to hit bigger reaches, with the announcement of the competition going national.
2007 then brought a free festival ‘Dare Protoplay’ to the table, a 3 day event allowing the general public, and industry experts to play, and then vote on the best game.
Since the Dare to be Digital competition started the popularity has been growing year on year, and it is now their 13th year running the competition at the university.
During the Dare ProtoPlay games festival as an example, 10,000 people attended to play the 15 games available over the 3 day period of running; a record for the event.
Students entering are given free accomodation at the halls for the 9 weeks from June to August it runs for, £150 each a week, and a total of £200 for the team budget of the game. Each team consists of 5; usually a balanced bunch of artists, programmers and audio students.
Dare has grown from a local competition with local sponsorship to an international competition with multinational sponsorship.
This ethos runs throughout: the students start the competition with ideas and enthusiasm and come out of the competition confident and highly skilled with sought after experience under their belt.
– http://www.daretobedigital.com/39_History.html
The three winners of the Dare ProtoPlay festival receive £2500 in prizes based on innovation and creativity, market potential and use of technology.
The three winning teams are then entered into the BAFTA ‘Ones to Watch’ awards!
The three winning games of ProtoPlay have been announced to compete for the award in 2013:
Starcrossed, developed by Kind of a Big Deal for Windows 7 phones (team leader Kimi Sulopuisto, Petri Liuska, Andrew MacLean, Minttu Meriläinen, Vili Viitaniemi)
Pixel Story, developed by Loan Wolf Games for the PC (team leader Martin Cosens, Luke Harrison, Ashley Hayes, Thomas McParland, Benjamin Rushton)
Project Thanatos, developed by Raptor Games, for PC and virtual reality headsets (team leader Hugh Laird, Andrew Coles, Tom Kemp, Tom Laird, Alexandra Shapland)
Kimi Sulopuisto from Kind of a Big Deal said:
“This is the biggest thing I’ve achieved in my life. I’d absolutely encourage anyone looking to make their own games to enter Dare to be Digital – you’ve nothing to lose, and you could win so much.”
Martin Cosens from Loan Wolf Games said:
“This is absolutely amazing. For anyone wanting to make games, I’d say don’t hesitate, just do it. Don’t let anyone curb your ideas or hopes, as things like this can happen – you can get into Dare to be Digital, and get nominated for a BAFTA.”
Hugh Laird from Raptor Games said:
“We were hoping and praying we’d get nominated for a BAFTA – it really justifies nine weeks of hard, hard work. And we didn’t expect to win the audience award, which is just the icing on top.”
Johnny Minkley, BAFTA Games Committee member and Dare judge, said:
“I’m hugely impressed with the standard of all the games on show and the professionalism and passion of all the Dare to be Digital teams.
“It was a hard choice for the judges, but all three BAFTA nominees are strong games and very different games. It will be a really tough decision for the judges to pick the final BAFTA winner at the Video Games Awards next March.”
Amongst all this, Loan Wolf Games were winners of the Channel 4 hosted prize, of £25,000. The project will now be funded and supported for completion of the game, and a full commercial release.
Raptor Games won the public vote of the Intel Visual Computing Tools Audience Award, each team member getting an Intel Ultrabook.
Professor Louis Natanson, who leads computer games education at Abertay University, said:
“The entrants to Abertay University’s Dare to be Digital get better and better every year, and all 15 teams have done something incredible – built a professional, playable and exciting game in just nine weeks.
“The BAFTA-nominated winners – Kind of a Big Deal, Loan Wolf Games and Raptor Games – stood out from the tough competition for their exceptional game design, playability and commercial appeal, but all 15 teams have the experience now to enter the games industry or start their own businesses.
“We look forward to seeing, and playing, many successes from them in the future.”
If this sounds like enough of a step up, this year the ProtoPlay festival expanded, with a ‘Dare Indie Fest’. It is a conference for budding entrepreneurs and it showcases games from independent companies.
It is presented by Abertay Prototype Fund, and provides grants of up to £25,000 to help small and startup games companies to get up on their feet and start developing the next possible big game.
For more information on the Dare Indie Fest, visit http://prototypefund.abertay.ac.uk/
For more information on Dare to be Digital, visit:
