Scottish universities scoop games award

The three winners of Edinburgh Interactive Festival were: Blue Skies (Abertay University) for their game ‘Origamee’, Ctrl_D (Peking University) for ‘VegeMe’ and Dark Matter Design (Wolverhampton University) for ‘Boro-Toro’. Each team was awarded £2,500 and a BAFTA nomination.

Contrived (Edinburgh University) were the team to receive the most public votes, for their game Grav, they won the Audience Award sponsored by Microsoft and a prize of £1500.

[…] Abertay University is extremely proud to be working with all the sponsors and supporters of Dare in promoting the talents, skills and creativity […]

Professor Bernard King

Principal of Abertay

Organised and promoted by the University of Abertay Dundee in association with Channel 4, Dare to be Digital saw 17 five-strong teams of students haling from Birmingham to Beijing spending the last 10 weeks in host centres across the United Kingdom.

Seventeen judges from fifteen different companies including Sony, Babel Media, Channel 4 and Sport Interactive picked the three winners based on creativity and innovation, use of technology and market potential.

Professor Bernard King CBE, Principal of Abertay said: “As the originators and organisers of Dare to be Digital, Abertay University is extremely proud to be working with all the sponsors and supporters of Dare in promoting the talents, skills and creativity that contribute directly to the success of the computer games sector both in Scotland and across the UK and Ireland.”

Other universities who joined with Abertay this year to run hosting centres across the UK and Ireland are: Birmingham City University, Brighton University, Goldsmiths, University of London and Trinity College Dublin.

Richard Leinfellner, Chief Executive Officer of BabelMedia and chair the judging panel, commented: "The panel of game industry experts felt the overall standard of this year's entries exceeded all their expectations, both in terms of breadth of subject matter and overall game quality.

The Dare to be Digital contest, which was established at the University of Abertay Dundee, opened itself to international entrants in 2005 and has seen teams form Malaysia, Japan and Canada, among others, compete.