Twelve teams of five students from Scotland, England, Ireland, India and China are competing in Dare to be Digital 2007, the U.K.’s premier game design competition.
This competition is a chance for all 12 teams to showcase their prototypes alongside the Edinburgh Interactive Festival at a special event on August 12-14. The final awards ceremony will take place on August 16. This year’s three winning teams will form the entire shortlist for the new BAFTA Ones to Watch Award, which will be be presented at the British Academy Video Games Awards in October.
“We are particularly interested to see how this year’s applicants are not afraid of taking on the challenge of designing with new consoles and distribution channels such as Steam and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade in mind, nor trying out new genres and combinations of genres such as musical RPG, games targeted for women and an MMOG based on the age-old playground game of tag,” said Paul Durrant, director of Dare to be Digital.
Councillor Michael Browne, Chairman of Belfast City Council’s Development Committee said, “This is an exciting opportunity to showcase local talent at an international level and a great benefit for Belfast’s wider creative sector. I am particularly delighted to see the breadth of young creative talent we have and the passion they all share for innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of interactive entertainment.”