Dundee video game festival unveils BAFTA shortlist

The Dare to be Digital event in Dundee. Picture: Alan Richardson

The only way to secure a nomination for this BAFTA is to be crowned a winner at the Dare to be Digital game design competition run by Abertay University in Dundee.

Each team of five had nine weeks to build a game and their work was showcased at the four-day Dare ProtoPlay games festival in the city.

This year a record crowd of 13,000 attended the festival and played the 15 games featured at the event.

On the final day the three winning teams were announced: iKnow who created The Unknown for Android phone; Mazhlele, with their game Project Heera for XBox360 and PC and finally, Team DOS who have produced Size DOS Matter for iPad.

They will now battle it out for the BAFTA with the winner being announced at a ceremony early next year.

Professor Louis Natanson, who leads computer games education at Abertay University, described this year’s entrants as “the best yet”: “The BAFTA-nominated winners stood out from the very tough competition for their exceptional game design and commercial appeal, but all 15 teams have the experience now to enter the games industry or start their own businesses.

“Building a professional, playable and exciting game in just nine weeks is a very, very hard thing to do, and these 75 students have all excelled during their time in Dundee. We look forward to hearing about their new companies, game releases and many successes in the future.”

The festival was officially opened on Thursday by Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs Fiona Hyslop and the creator of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Ian Livingstone.

Ms Hyslop offered her congratulations to all participating teams and said: “As a creative nation, Scotland is the perfect home for game production with our cutting-edge skills, talent and infrastructure and once again Dare to be Digital has underlined Scotland’s place at the very heart of gaming excellence.”

Imre Jele, creator-in-chief at Bossa Studios and member of the BAFTA Games Committee, said: “The quality of games shown at Dare ProtoPlay advances every year at an astonishing rate.

“We’re not only looking at small prototypes showing seeds of ideas any more, but can play products surpassing the quality of many commercially released titles.”

Dare ProtoPlay is sponsored by Creative Scotland, Dundee City Council and EventScotland with the three main Dare to be Digital awards sponsored by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.