EA UK Guildford Named Dare To Be Digital London Host

Organizers of the UK-based game development competition, Dare to be Digital, have announced that the 2007 event's newly established London and South East center will be hosted by Electronic Arts’ UK studio in Guildford. The London and South East center is the third of three host centers announced for this year’s contest, the others being in Dundee and Belfast. The contest, hosted by Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, pits student game designers against one another with a short deadline and industry advisers to produce the best game prototype in the course of the summer vacation. According to Dare officials, the expansion into London and the South East came about through a partnership between the University of Abertay Dundee, EA, the London Development Agency, South East Media Network (SEMN), and NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), with added support from computer chip developer AMD. Four teams of five students each will be selected to spend the first nine weeks of the 10-week Dare competition based at EA's Guildford studio. Each team will be tasked with designing and building a “fully functioning prototype” of a video game concept, with financial support and mentoring coming from game developers in the South East while they are in the competition. The deadline for applications for places in the London and South East center is May 7. In the 10th week of the competition, the teams will travel to Edinburgh to join two teams from north and south Ireland, four from Scotland and two international teams from China and India. The teams will display their prototypes in “Dare ProtoPlay”, a three-day showcase of all the teams’ work, scheduled to take place August 12-14 alongside the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. The event will allow the general public and industry experts to play the entries, as well as vote on their favorites, with winners announced on August 16 during the Dare to be Digital Awards Ceremony. “Dare to be Digital represents a unique model for showcasing young talent to the UK games industry,” commented Richard Leinfellner, a vice president at EA. “It has acted as a much needed incubator for new talent and one which EA has been proud to be associated with for a number of years.” He added: “As industry leaders, we are committed to stimulating innovation in game making and encouraging the next generation of talent in the UK. The Dare model of setting teams up to deliver a real game prototype in 10 weeks is similar to the process we go through when getting games into production. It promotes teamwork and is very much in keeping with many of our own values.”