Hello all! Thought this was worthy of a wee forum update since it's exciting gaming related news for myself. 
I'll start with the backstory first as majority of people won't know anything about this.
There is a games development competition run by the government and games industry called Dare to be Digital. 15 teams of 5 people work together in Dundee for 10 weeks over the summer creating a game of their own choosing which they develop from the ground up. They are supervised and mentored by industry professionals and the top three games at the end are nominated for a BAFTA award and attend the video games BAFTAs in London the following year. It's a great chance to get into the industry by meeting and impressing potential employers which is very hard for recent graduates like myself lately!
Now out of these 15 teams, 3 of them come from foreign countries; India, China and one Nordic country. They each have 4 members though and are joined by a fifth "Scottish Ambassador".
Now last year I applied with friends from uni and out of hundreds of applicants reached the final 30 for interviews. Unfortunately we didn't make it to the final 15 to take part though so were extremely gutted. This year though I applied as an individual. Had an interview last week and got accepted as the Scottish Ambassador for the Indian team!
Competition starts on 13th June in Dundee until mid August but I get to go visit my team in India for a week before hand to get to know them and get to grips with the game and what I'll be working on over the course of development.
It's very exciting times for me as having narrowly missed out last year and not managing to get a job in the industry since graduating last July, it was seeming like a dead end. But now hopefully this experience will help me move onto better things and a career in the industry I love.
You can check out the website http://daretobedigital.com/ for more info if you are interested, you can also download all of the previous years games to play and try for yourself some of which are now on the App Store I believe.
I'll keep you up to date with how it's all going throughout the summer and we'll also have twitter accounts and web pages set up detailing our progress as we go.
In the meantime, I've got various softwares to learn and brush up in preparation so busy times ahead. Wish me luck!
I'll start with the backstory first as majority of people won't know anything about this.
There is a games development competition run by the government and games industry called Dare to be Digital. 15 teams of 5 people work together in Dundee for 10 weeks over the summer creating a game of their own choosing which they develop from the ground up. They are supervised and mentored by industry professionals and the top three games at the end are nominated for a BAFTA award and attend the video games BAFTAs in London the following year. It's a great chance to get into the industry by meeting and impressing potential employers which is very hard for recent graduates like myself lately!
Now out of these 15 teams, 3 of them come from foreign countries; India, China and one Nordic country. They each have 4 members though and are joined by a fifth "Scottish Ambassador".
Now last year I applied with friends from uni and out of hundreds of applicants reached the final 30 for interviews. Unfortunately we didn't make it to the final 15 to take part though so were extremely gutted. This year though I applied as an individual. Had an interview last week and got accepted as the Scottish Ambassador for the Indian team!
Competition starts on 13th June in Dundee until mid August but I get to go visit my team in India for a week before hand to get to know them and get to grips with the game and what I'll be working on over the course of development.
It's very exciting times for me as having narrowly missed out last year and not managing to get a job in the industry since graduating last July, it was seeming like a dead end. But now hopefully this experience will help me move onto better things and a career in the industry I love.
You can check out the website http://daretobedigital.com/ for more info if you are interested, you can also download all of the previous years games to play and try for yourself some of which are now on the App Store I believe.
I'll keep you up to date with how it's all going throughout the summer and we'll also have twitter accounts and web pages set up detailing our progress as we go.
In the meantime, I've got various softwares to learn and brush up in preparation so busy times ahead. Wish me luck!
Comment