Dare to Be Digital Reveals Winners

Winners were revealed for the 2008 Dare To Be Digital awards today at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. The design competition, a collaboration between the University of Abertay Dundee and UK Channel 4, chose three winners from among 17 student teams. The Dare to Be Digital winners earn £2,500 ($4,659) and a nomination in a special "Ones to Watch" category of the BAFTA Awards held in March of next year. The three prizes went to Blue Skies (Abertay University Dundee) for their game Origamee; Ctrl_D (Peking University) for VegeMe, and Dark Matter Design (Wolverhampton University) for Boro-Toro. Blue Skies' Origamee incorporates traditional adventure-style puzzle solving into a 3D pop-up storybook world, and weaves environmental issues throughout. Ctrl_D's VegeMe lets opponents race one another to grow and style their own world, while Dark Matter Design's Boro-Toro is a sidescrolling platform-puzzler that uses Wii controls. The 17 teams that participated in the competition each had five students, and submitted fully-functioning prototypes of their game ideas developed in the past 10 weeks. The entries were judged by a panel of 17 judges from 15 companies including Sony, Babel Media, Channel 4 and Sport Interactive. They were also put up for public vote, after they were presented in the Dare ProtoPlay public showcase at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, and event organizers say over 3000 visitors attended. The teams were also "put under the unforgiving scrutiny" of a "junior judges" panel of kids aged 6-13. Edinburgh University's Contrived team received the Audience Award for the most public votes for Grav, a "retro-futuristic" robot title that uses the game's environment as ally. BabelMedia CEO Richard Leinfellner, who chaired the judging panel, commented, "It is my pleasure to relay that the panel of game industry experts felt the overall standard of this year’s entries exceeded all their expectation both in terms of breadth of subject matter and overall game quality." "In a climate of spiralling costs and product slippages Dare consistently manages to highlight what is achievable by the best new talent looking to enter the games business in just 10 weeks."