Dare to be Digital 2006

It’s close to the end of Dare to be Digital, the ten-week-long international game-development competition for university students. Competitors have been working steadily on their designs for the past nine weeks and if the developer diaries are anything to go by, they’re under some serious pressure. Twelve-hour days, weekend working – sounds like they’re doing a great job of modelling the infamously less-enjoyable parts of the games industry. Still, all the better to experience it first-hand, hey? With all that stress you’d expect there to be some serious competition but I’ve been told that “With regards to the rival teams, they’re actually not that hostile towards us.”

Not that hostile? Faint praise… Joking aside, I’m sure everyone’s more focused on making the best game they can, not bitching about others’. Click on the images to view each team’s diary.

Hosted by the University of Abertay in Dundee, Dare to be Digital is a fantastic way for students to get to grips with the realities of working in game development. As goes the mantra on many a developer’s recruitment pages, just about anyone can come up with an idea. Converting that idea to a finished product is a much more complex and painful process and this competition not only forces the students to deal with that reality but also provides immense support in the form of training sessions and advice from established games companies like Rare, EA, Nintendo of Europe and many others. What better way for an aspiring game developer to make those invaluable industry contacts?

Competitors from previous years are now employed EA, Denki, Rockstar, Eutechnyx and Criterion (now also EA). Industry professionals TPLD have their origins in the competition, which just goes to show how much of a jump-start it can give you.

One of the teams, Artisan, is working on a game called Metalhead. It is planned to use a gesture system reminiscent of the one in Lionhead’s Black & White and features Meta, “a magnetic stomping robot who can run, jump, magnetize the Metalheads to him and forge blocks using pure magnetic energy”. Plus, he can fly. Tommy Millar, Artisan’s team leader had the following to say about his experience of this year’s competition:

“Just when we think we’ve got it down, another little agitation pops up. It’s like whack-a-mole. Except nothing like it, physically. Now, it’s more of a “Stay in here from 8 until 9” kinda affair, with weekends being in bounds also. I try not to drive my team too far, but we aim to have a fantastic game by the end, not just a ‘good’ one, so it’ll all be worth it.

I must admit, at the beginning, I believed this to be no more than a competition. However at this point in time I can now say that’s a completely misguided assumption; this competition has readied us for the real world. The amount of support people from Denki, Rare, Nintendo, Cohort, EA and more have given us has changed my mind about everything – from things that seem common sense to others I wouldn’t have learned in a lifetime otherwise – and I can’t recommend Dare to be Digital enough. Get a game design document ready for next year!!”

This year’s competition will culminate with the awards ceremony next Friday, 18th August 2006. Registration for the the awards ceremony is still open and will remain so until Monday 14th August so if you’re interested you can register here.

The competition is, unfortunately, limited by funding that they receive from regional development agencies. As such, this year’s competition was only open to students attending Scottish, Northern Irish and Republic of Ireland Universities or Colleges of Art and Algoma University College in Canada. Regions for next year have not been secured yet but if you’re interested, there’s no harm in thinking about your design and pulling together a team. Plenty of this year’s entrants worried about making it through the selection process. Stewart Hogarth, member of the team winning “Greatest Market Potential” in 2003 and now an employee of Denki suggests that you focus on the following areas when developing your proposal, based on his own experience:

• Is your idea achievable?
• Is the team capable?
• Does the idea have potential?
• Is the idea original?… and after all that it’ll come down to
  whichever ideas sound the most interesting.

Sage advice. There’s no point in turning up with a plotline and some character designs and expecting the “little” details like AI, level layout, world physics and movement animation to just fall into place when you get working. Start thinking about them now and you might just have a shot at making it through selection next year.

Seven days until the teams are judged… tension mounting all around. Winners will be announced next Friday, 18th August 2006. Good luck and congratulations to everyone taking part.

Related Links:
2005’s Dare to be Digital entries
Clark Boyd from PRI’s The World on the competition – wma streaming audio. [found via CathodeTan]

Edit: Just a note to say that all images in this post are © 2006 Dare to be Digital

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