Destroying Your Experience

In response to a question from the floor on piracy and how it affects the PC as a platform, executive producer Camarillo said:

“Piracy is a real concern. The PS3 has been cracked now as well and people are downloading PS3 games and 360 games are being downloaded so that’s a threat to just the industry in general. For us specifically, it was a very traumatic experience because we’re really excited about the game and the quality that we were able to get into it and what we were able to accomplish… …We’re at the end and we’re really excited about where we’re at and your game gets leaked. And it’s not even that the final version of the game gets leaked, you know?

“People are like ‘It’s 40/45 days before launch, Crysis is leaked’ but that build was already from the middle of January. With 250 people working on a project, thousands of bugs get fixed in a heartbeat. So that version is like a really ugly version that we don’t want anyone to see… …[someone] posted the first 25 minutes of the game and there’s some really important story in there that we wanted people to experience for the first time when they can continue to play the game for another hour or so after that.

“So we were really secretive with the story, not because we don’t wanna tell you. We want you to have the whole experience of the whole final game. The awesome music that we created that’s also on the internet for download now. We had announcements that we were gonna make with the talent that we worked with – we were so excited about that. All the movies; we spent a lot of time really thinking them through. The loading screen movies are actually informative and tell you about the next mission; they’re not fluff. They deliver story elements to you. All this stuff starts going up in pieces and even if someone downloads it and plays it themselves they might make a bad decision based on the fact that there are so many bugs in it. ‘Oh, there are so many bugs in the game I wanted to play. It’s so buggy, I’m not gonna buy it now.’

I love his passion for the integrity of our gaming experience but I think he’s doing gamers a disservice here. We’re intelligent enough to realise that a pre-release leaked version is not representative of the final product. Those who choose to download the leaked version, those who choose to watch a 25-minute video on YouTube are not the people who would have appreciated the first-time “Wow!” factors of your artistic endeavours in the first place. Some people like spoilers. Others work hard to avoid them.

Artistic Integrity

“There are multiple dangers. It’s not just the sheer act of people copying it and stealing it. That’s the financial one but to the quality of the product and the first way someone experiences the game and gets really excited about it like, ‘Wow, that was a really good game! Yeah, I saw that online. Yeah, I saw that online.’

“And we had that problem with the original Crysis in that Crysis 1 was announced and then the date moved a few times, over and over and over again but meanwhile the marketing machine was going about promoting the game. They just kept putting more and more videos up online and content out there. By the time people played it… they said ‘Aw, I saw this all already.’ It’s fun. It looked good. But you’d already experienced it.

“We were really trying to go the opposite way this time – hold as much as possible but still get people excited about it enough that they wanted to buy into it and get into the game world but then experience that all for the first time”

Morals and Profiteering

Camarillo was unimpressed, not only by the people distributing gameplay footage but by the press who helped to publicise it.

“People were downloading it and putting stuff up on YouTube. There’s a real financial concern, there’s a real morality concern… …even some gaming press have posted video links to YouTube for the first 25 minutes. And you know that that’s a business. And you know that when you go read that story, that they’re making money off of the advertising sales that are on that page from readers going to the site to look at content that was from a pirated version of the game.

“So then you start getting into this whole mental dilemma about “Where is it right? Where is it not?” I mean it’s definitely not right to copy it and download it and steal it, but other people then benefiting off someone ELSE’s actions… where does that line stop and get blurry? We tend to talk about it in simple terms – yeah, downloading hurts the industry but how does that hurt the value of IPs? How does that hurt the branding of games? How does that hurt the customer – the first experience of the customer?”

How did it hurt Crytek?

“Oh god, that was terrible. We went through all the phases of loss in the office. Afterwards it was denial. ‘No, this isn’t happening. No, this isn’t true. Oh, this can’t be happening.’ The whole denial phase of it. Then angry. ‘WHO DID THIS? How did this happen?’ People saying like, ‘He’d better not come to the office’ It wasn’t an employee but you know, whoever did this, whoever was Patient Zero. If I ever find this guy…

“This kind of thing, there’s anger and then people just kind of get into acceptance. ‘Oh, it’s out there’ Then people just get horribly depressed. And that went on for two or three days. Our office is generally really upbeat and really communicative. People are really tired because they work hard but we all collaborate and work with each other and get around and talk around problems and everyone was walking around like Charlie Brown – really sad and shuffling their feet. It was really… really tough.

I try not to work seven days a week ’cause it’s just so exhausting and you get into a really bad cycle where.. I work from home and try to stay out of the office for just one day. We try to make sure everyone does that because you get into a cycle where you basically just work 21 days straight without stopping and it fries your brain. So I specifically didn’t go into the office that day after becase I was in such a pissy mood. After that happened I didn’t want to be around anybody because I’m one of the people that help get everyone fired up and come into work every day and… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go into the office and just be around everyone. It hurt ME so bad to know that people were watching what we tried so hard to perfect and getting it spoiled for them. “

What eventually pulled Crytek out of their slump was the incredible response and support from their community.

“Even people that hate on Crytek for whatever reason said ‘I know I said bad things about them in the past but I just feel terrible about this – I’ll never say anything bad again. This was an awful, awful event that happened to them. Please don’t download it’. So the community self-policed in some regard. It is still out there and it is still being downloaded but a lot of people just said ‘No, I’m not downloading this. I’m boycotting it.’ ‘I wasn’t gonna buy it but this is terrible. I’m gonna go buy it now.’

“…The only thing we can see quite quickly is if people go out and actually pre-order the game. So I’ve asked people, if you wanna support Crytek; we’re an independent developer. The number that we see that says people still want a PC version, that they’re supporting a PC version or a console version is go out and preorder it because I will see those numbers the next week and then I can tell the team ‘Hey, guess what? Our preorders went up by 200% ’cause everybody’s really supporting us.’ And then I’ll see happy faces.

Yup, there’s your take-home. Want to support Crytek? Buy Our Shit. Message of support are nice and all, but games are still a business. Put your money where your mouth is and preorder Crysis 2. So says Camarillo.

Crysis 2 will be available on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 from 25th March 2011.

Who’s eligible?

You need to be a team of 5* containing a balance of art and programming students with a team member who will tackle the audio aspects of the game. In addition to this your team must have someone willing to take on the role of team leader in addition to their creative / technical duties. You must be a team of students (postgraduate and / or undergraduate) at a Higher Education Institute (University or Art College).

If you’re applying from outside the UK, there are extra criteria (e.g. Irish teams need at least 2 members from the Republic and 2 members from Northern Ireland for some reason). See the full How to Apply to Dare to be Digital post on the official site for details.

Why should you apply? Well, this year the competition is partly sponsored by Intel, who will be providing hardware and software specifically geared towards games and media production – great for getting hands-on experience. You’ll also get to hang with people already in the industry, you’ll have a demo ready for job applications and you get a weekly stipend and free accommodation for the competition. Sure, it’s in Scotland but you can’t have everything, right? ;)

[Ok, I admit that I have never been to Dundee. It's way too far up north for me. While I'm sure it's a lovely place and the photos make Dundee look very pretty, I likes my warmth.]

To a more personal perspective on the competition, check out the interviews we did with Dare to be Digital competitors back in 2006. Then go start polishing up your application.

Can you tell me about the role of a producer?

FP: I don’t really know… We are a very small team, we have multiple roles as in every small company. Basically, I don’t know if that is my job – what I did was organise with my colleague over there. We’d organise the team, set the goals, make the decisions with my partners – we’re doing this, we’re doing this that way. Also doing all the contracts for production with Sony – getting contracts in place, getting kits, getting the ideas in place, but it was a team effort.

I did that but I also did the design for some things like the interface; some modelling because I came from a modelling and design job. We all share a lot of things but the production side of things means I’m contact with my partners, my investors and daily trying to organise the production team and the outside world.

It’s like project management?

FP: Yeah, i think so. Really I do so many things it’s just “Okay, I’m a producer.” I could be a director or maybe I could be something else.

How big is the team?

FP: 20 people. 15 hands-on making the game and then we have a lawyer, accountant, all that sort of stuff. It was all the team in Portugal. We outsourced the video of course to [unintelligble] Animation and Q&A was done by an outsourced team, too. We were doing this for two and a half years. It’s pretty long

Felipe Pina, Producer for Under Siege

FP: I think it’s too long because we were not… we were predicting less time to do it and as we reviesed the calendar, we starting seeing things increased. I say too long because i was thinking of seeing it finished sooner – can’t remember how long. It doesn’t matter. What we said when we started looking at the first version of the game was “This is going in a good direction so lets just continue going on investing, making sure we don’t cut features or cut back on something. We really need to have everything moving along in the game.”

Like the five iterations of interface we discussed earlier.

FP: Yes, exactly. Until it’s right. It’s called iterative design.

So what did your investors think of that? They thought they were getting a return much earlier?

FP: No, the investors were great. They knew the risks of doing this, especially since it was a very hard decision, being with Nintendo DS, making boxed titles that had the publishers were paying? Suddenly oh, we’ll be our own publisher, so we’ll take all the risk, do the game, publish it ourselves, 6 languages and all that. But we said, if we don’t do it this way, the reason for me doing videogames is that I love videogames. I want to be involved with everything. I don’t want some publisher deciding this is blue or red? We decide. So that was a passionate decision of “We want to do it this way. Let’s do it.”

Will it sell? Of course you never know, but since we are very confident we would do a good job, a good product, we are proud of what we do. As long as we stay faithful to this passion, I think we’ll get where we want to go. We got where we wanted. It’s just a question of seeing if people like it.

We had a very good reaction in September. We were at a technological fair in Lisbon, a game show. It was about technology and there were about 500 people passed by our booth to play the game. And everyone played it – an 8 year old kid was able to play it. Old guys were able to play it. Entire families were able to play it. So we were very happy because up to that point we didn’t have such a big QA team doing playtesting. We were very happy to see it work. The decisions were good on the interface, the design, everything so we were happy.

From that point on we were sure that we’d made something to be proud of. To be happy with.

Your investors – are they games people? Are they big fans or are they business people?

FP: One of our investors, he plays Warcraft 3. He played it like, hardcore. He played it online and he was really good at it. So they all have consoles at home, and play of course, so they understand what we wanted and where we’re going. They give us feedback on the administrative part because they run other companies so they understand how businesses work with the normal day-to-day life of paying salaries and doing the normal business side that we did not understand. And we brought in the knowledge of programming and design.

Your investors were very much hands-on and involved the whole time?

FP: Hands-on, totally. They are here [points across the room]. They’re part of the company – Over there is the CEO, he administrates the business side of things. Another is not so hands-on but he is a major investor and we have another one who is not here. Antonio has a company of 3D design for architectural buildings and televison; they do aerial shots of buildings that will be there later.

So you call them investors but it’s basically a self-funded company? The people who run the company [on a daily basis] are the people putting money in?

FP: Yeah, I also own a piece of the company so it’s also my money. If this goes wrong I will go back to my mom and dad and say “Hey, it didn’t work. I’m back!” Hehe… but it won’t happen. It’s almost impossible for that to happen.

So we like it. We think it’s a good environment to work. The guys that we hired see us as not… I am a producer but I have my desk in the middle of everyone else. I do the calls to talk about anything and everyone knows what’s going on. If there’s a problem of any kind, everyone knows. Even the secretaries – Everyone is very much aware of what is going on. and everyone plays the game. So the idea was always to keep a team like that. A nice cozy team.

The Archer

FP: When we started with the idea of this 10 years ago – the company was founded 4 years ago but we started with the idea 10 years ago when we were working our normal day-to-day jobs – the challenges posed against us were basically the ones that, since portugal does not have games industry of people building games it is normal that companies like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are a little bit, you know, “Who are these guys? They don’t have history.”

If I was in any of those positions I would say “They don’t have any history of doing this. They won’t be able to to do it. Or if they will, they will probably do a bad job,” which is normal. So what we did was, in the first 6 years we learned for ourselves the technology and all the development, without consoles – just on the PC.

The first step when we founded the company was do a very little game for kids, on the PC. We kind of grew from that. Next was a Nintendo DS game, a boxed game. We did it with a publisher that helped us because we could not go directly to a big house and say [throws his hands in the air] “Hey, we’re going to make games!”

“Yeah, but who are you guys? What games have you made?”

“None”

“Oh, so okay, whatever”

The problem was always that you can’t make games for consoles because you haven’t made them before, but if I want to make them – it’s a loop. How do I get into the loop? So the way to enter was to be really persistent, and to be really… to do good presentations – we had a prototype for the game that we presented – and to do good designs.

To present, we had a very big manual of the game. So when we started talking to Sony they were very happy to see that we were very passionate about this and they said “Okay, let go. Let’s see what you got. Step by step, let’s see what you got.” Nintendo was the same. We needed to have the publishers on our side to say “Oh these guys, they can do it. They’ve already showed us this prototype – we believe that they can do it”

Eirik, one of the main characters

There was a Sony guy here earlier. He was very happy with the final result and of course they’re happy that it’s on their machine. We’re not… we’re machine-agnostic.

You’ve done games for Nintendo and you’ve done Sony now. This game is PlayStation-exclusive, isn’t it?

FP: There’s nothing we’ve been saying that it’s an exclusive. We decided it was exclusive because we cannot… we are too small to do multi-platform games. It’s too much. And also I don’t want to split the community. If I do this on two platforms then I have levels uploaded from one machine… so there were a lot of decisions frm the beginning of which machine does this game fit into better and Sony’s machine was definitely the one because in 2007 they were opening the doors with Little Big Planet and user-created content. These guys are doing the thing that we want to do so it makes sense. They also have free online access and all those tools with YouTube and Facebook, so it made sense on this machine. It doesn’t mean we won’t make anything else on any other machine but of course now we are experts on this one. It makes sense for us on a business, technology and also artistic side. I want my art to sing.

[The team will say] “Oh no, we have to change to another machine. Oh, no!” They are right, that’s boring. I want to make games. I don’t want to be worried about if it’s Sony or Microsoft or whoever – I want to make games and Sony were very good. They were great. They were very supportive of the process. They have an internal forum where we were talking with the creator of the Move, Anton from America. He called us! Just calling us to say “Oh, how are you doing?” they are very very good to work with because they do this open relationship and it’s right. We were very happy with the support – not in money or in the publishing side but on the “Go this way” or “Talk with this guy”. That was very helpful.

End of part 1

Pop over to part 2 of this interview, where we discuss bastards, trophy-whores and other perils of opening a 12+ game to the wider gaming community.

Have you ever wanted to start your own games studio? What’s stopping you? Tell me in the comments.

It will take you through how a video game is created, what technology is involved and let you create your own characters, as well as a small “piece of animated game” o.O

Places are still available, £70 for the 2-day workshop in Edinburgh. More details on the Dare to be Digital website.

There are two formats for the competition this year, Do and Dream.

Do is the traditional development competition. Teams of 5 students or recent graduates are chosen from around the country to develop a game from scratch in 6 weeks over summer. The big difference this year is that they choose from ideas submitted by the community.

Dream is the new community section. Anybody can register on the website and pitch their game idea. Other people will vote for their favourite ideas and add comments. The Do team will then choose an idea each and develop the game for the competition. Those dreamers who submitted the chosen ideas will win the following:

• £500 cash prize for the originators of games subsequently chosen by the teams for development.
• An invitation to to the Dare Awards ceremony to receive the prize
• A single return UK flight and 3 nights’ accommodation to Edinburgh to take part in Dare ProtoPlay during the Edinburgh Festival period. Terms & Conditions apply. (If you are from overseas, you have the option of taking £200 in cash instead or we can fly you from London)
• Exposure to the top notch games companies and partners that Dare is associated with
• A showcase opportunity in Dare ProtoPlay
• Publicity

For more information check out the Dreamer’s FAQ and the Do-ers FAQ

Edinburgh Interactive Festival

Monday 13th August – 15:45 Games Actually
Sevket Gozolan, Marie-Sol Beaudry, Patrick O’Luanaigh, Sean Dromgoole
Are game developers and publishers paying attention to the fastest growing sector in the interactive games industry…the female gamer? Do they really need to? Join the debate with industry insiders Sean Dromgoole of Some Research, Marie-Sol Beaudry of Ubisoft, Patrick O’Luanaigh of nDreams and Sevket Gozalan of Play Vanilla.

S’pose that depends on whether or not you want to fight for attention in an almost-saturated market or expand your horizons to include new people, doesn’t it?

Monday 13th August – 16:30 Casting for Games – The CG Actor
Ian Livingstone
Casting CG characters in games is a different mindset and skill – Ian Livingstone of Eidos puts some logic behind the evolution of games generated character and what makes success.

Let’s see… in my gaming experience it seems to be mostly ‘person in distress that needs saving’ = female (or male). Military = male. Redshirt = male. Lackey = male. You mean there’s more to it? There certainly should be.

Tuesday 14 August – 13:45 Keynote: Simon Nelson
Simon Nelson who introduced podcasting in his last role for the BBC and now Head of BBC Vision reveals why BBC DG Mark Thompson said the corporation had something to learn from ‘games’ and how ‘games’ will figure in the beeb’s new media folio in the future.

I’ll freely admit I spent the last two years without a television. I get all the information I need through the internet. Nevertheless, I think the BBC still has an important part to play when it comes to public service.

Several years ago I was in conversation with a “Women’s Services” doctor. A character on one of the more popular soaps had unexpectedly died of cervical cancer. This led to a sudden surge of women reporting for the cervical smears that they had been neglecting for years, despite receiving many regular reminder letters. The waiting list for test results tripled in just a few weeks.

All because of a soap storyline.

Games, if done properly, can be just as educational. Every once in a while you hear that young people are watching less TV. Public service broadcasting needs to find a way to engage with them (us). Fun games with a serious message could be the answer.

The official Edinburgh Interactive Festival website will give you the full programme details, along with venue information. It’s unfortunately rather pricey to actually attend – £141 if you book before 1st August or an almost-affordable £88.13 for students. I shall not be going :(

This year’s contest is now accepting entries from London and the South East of England. For those living elsewhere, I do apologise for not covering this earlier. The Irish and Scottish application deadline was apparently 11th April 2007. There doesn’t seem to be a Welsh centre this year.

If you’re a university student in London or recently graduated and you want to get into video game development, this competition is probably the best start you can get. I interviewed former competitor Stephen McGreal. He was team leader of Zoo Crew, who won the prize for “Greatest Market Potential” back in 2003. Since the competition Stephen has worked for EA and Rockstar Leeds:

It’s fair to say that I would have had a much harder time getting into the industry if I hadn’t been in Dare. One of the senior guys from EA was on the judging panel that year, and was so impressed that he invited the two winning teams down to the studio in Chertsey to present our Dare projects to the rest of the studio. To cut a long story short, 3 of us were basically hired on the spot. So in terms of actually getting into the industry, Dare was great.

What games companies want to see from graduate employees is not necessarily how good their grades are, but an example of what they’re actually capable of. Dare gives you a great showcase. It means you can turn out a demo which shows exactly what you’re capable of under stressful conditions, and if games companies can see that, it makes it a lot easier for them to decide if they want to hire you.

Dare To Be Digital is a notoriously intensive competition. The team has to develop a playable game prototype in just 10 weeks. Press release extract:

Teams of 5 students, a mix of artists and programmers, assemble in a regional hosting centre for 10 weeks to develop a prototype video game, receiving daily support and weekly training sessions from industry specialists.

At the end of the competition, the prototypes will be displayed at a special talent showcasing event in Edinburgh, Dare ProtoPlay, alongside the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival in August. In a first for Dare, the general public as well as industry experts will get to play and vote for the games. Prizes will then be awarded to the winning teams at a special awards ceremony in Dundee.

Emphasis mine.

This year’s Dare To Be Digital is running from 6th June 2007 to 16th August 2007. You will have to commit 35 hours a week to the competition. The London and the South East regional centre is in EA’s Guildford offices. There is the chance of a week’s leave, with the permission of your team and the Project Manager.

So, are you an aspiring games developer? Did you graduate within the past 2 years from a London or South East university,or are you still studying there? Then it’s time to get your team together and enter this competition. The application deadline is either 7th May (acccording to the press release) or 20th May (according to the official website). I’d say hedge your bets and get your application in ASAP.

I’ll be covering the progress of this UK-based games development competition as it progresses. Check back in June or subscribe to our newsfeed if you don’t want to miss out.

I’ll leave you with some advice from Stephen…

Have fun. If you’re not having fun making the game, there’s a pretty good chance that the game you’re making isn’t fun. And nobody likes games which aren’t fun.

Links:
Dare To Be Digital Official Website

The primary job of a designer is communication. This means you need to get used to doing a lot of writing, meeting, and explaining. Your ideas are actually secondary to the main focus of explaining those ideas. A designer with mediocre ideas and great communication skills is better than a designer with super ideas and no communication skills in a project of more than one person. Given this focus on communication, it should come as little surprise that people who design tend to write a lot and have blogs.

Excerpt from Psychochild, What Is a Game Designer?

Sounds good to me. I’m a big fan of explaining how I like things to be done, even with boring things like details and structure. Have you read my posts from earlier this week?

Psychochild’s post spurred a few people working elsewhere in the video games industry to reveal a little more about their jobs. Scott Jennings at Broken Toys added:

…the best designers are evangelists – not only do they come up with Keeno Ideas, but they are the keepers of the flame for their team – inspiring everyone that what is pouring out onto design docs and spreadsheets and visio charts and what have you actually is going to turn out to be something fun, really, and all this work is worth it.

It takes charisma, basically.

Excerpt from ScottJ, Everyone Tells Me How To Do My Job (And They’re Right, Damn It)

Hmm… that sounds a little harder. Not sure about this charisma thingy.

Matt Mihaly weighed in with another job – CEO of Iron Realms:

After I’m done with this post, I’ll be updating the EE website and then working on the list of sound effects we need produced, as our music is getting close to done. After that it’s onto today’s art and approving it or sending it back for corrections. Later this week I’ll be working with Chris and Martin to update our complete development schedule to reflect what’s ahead and what’s behind schedule, and I have a GDC presentation to do this week as well. Stratics is sending over an interview that I’ll devote some time to, and I’ve got to deal with closing up our final round of investment for EE. Of course, it’s tax season now too, which means spending some time coordinating with the accountants and probably the lawyer.

Excerpt from Matt, My Job

Sounds like hectic stuff that requires some serious organisation. Probably not the role for me just yet. I like to play games far too much.

Do you know of any other stories like these? I find personal anecdotes much more revealing than the non-specific blurbs seen on job sites.

Most Commercial Potential – Artisan with Metalheads (Go Tommy!)

Greatest Innovation and Creativity – Log2 n with Flux

Best Use of Technology for Product Delivery – Rule of Thumb with Gal Ex: Spacial Delivery

Best use of Screenwriting – Phaigo Interactive with Spaceport

And the Virtuoso Prize, which was sponsored and awarded by Denki went to Nicholas Koumentakis of Phaigo Interactive. I shall have to find out what the heck that was later, when the party hangovers have worn off.

Congratulations to everyone. The full list of prizes is on the official website awards page.

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