Students Get Animated in Dare to be Digital

13 July 2007

Students from our National Centre for Computer Animation are vying to win the UK’s premier video games competition.

A team of four students from the MSc in Computer Animation, together with a student from the BA in Computer Animation and Visualisation, have entered ‘Dare to be Digital’.

Their challenge is to design and demonstrate their own video game in just 10 weeks over the summer, from concept to full working prototype.

The team, named Ergophobia, is comprised of Masters students Matt Osbond, Ben Chandler, Hasan Atieh and Ali Darweesh, and undergraduate Seb Huart.

A further combined team, Super E.G.O., featuring undergraduate computer animation students from Bournemouth and Warwick, is also contending to win the competition.

Bournemouth’s Ergophobia has joined the teams from London and the South to develop its game in Guildford at the UK headquarters of Electronic Arts, the world's leading interactive entertainment software company.

Ergophobia’s stealth-based game, entitled The Silence of Night, is set in feudal Japan around 150 years ago, and played in a night time environment for added misdirection and atmospheric interest for the player.

“Our game is played at night, which gives us an opportunity to experiment with our ‘sound visualisation’ system, says team leader Matt Osbond, originally from Exeter. "This allows us to visually represent the sounds that are emitted so that they literally bounce off the walls.

“Setting the game in feudal Japan gives us an added visual quality for the characters and surroundings, and adds the opportunity to focus the sound visualisation through a ‘chi’ based meditative state.

The team are also intending on implementing a novel ‘interactive cutting’ mechanism, allowing the player to slice through various elements of the environment, such as cutting through the thin paper walls of a Japanese house, in order to evade enemies.

The competition is particularly challenging for the teams, which are attempting to achieve commercial-standard quality for their games despite the 10-week development period and lack of budget.

“Normally, games are planned and developed over several months or years, and usually with millions of pounds behind them, but we’re confident that The Silence of Night will be as creative as any game you can buy right now in the shops.”

Whilst Bournemouth’s MSc in Computer Animation is not a specific games course, the programme does give students the knowledge and transferable skills to be able to work in the games industry, as either a Technical Artist / Directors, or a Games Programmer.

All the members of Ergophobia have previously developed a successful driving game as part of their Masters group project, which gave them a good grounding in the concepts of game development and design.

"I'm very proud to have a team from the MSc in Computer Animation in the Dare to be Digital finals,” said Jon Macey, Senior Lecturer in Computer Animation. “They have put a great deal of effort into preparing the game idea whilst still completing their other studies for the MSc.

“The fact that the four students are able to enter Dare and also use the work they are doing there as their MSc project is a bonus, as they have industry input into the final MSc project and all the backing of the Dare team, along with the support of Electronic Arts,” Macey continued.

“This is the first time we have entered and I will encourage more teams who are interested in games projects to enter the competition in future years.”

Dare to be Digital 2007 features 12 teams competing in three regional centres based in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. Four of the teams are from Scottish universities, four are from universities in London and the South, and there is one team each from Ireland, Northern Ireland, India and China.

At the end of the competition, the prototypes will be displayed at a special talent showcasing event in Edinburgh where the general public will have a chance to play and vote for the games, with prizes awarded to the winning teams from each of the three regions.

The winning team from each location will collectively form the shortlist for the new BAFTA ‘Ones to Watch’ Award, to be presented at the British Academy Video Games Awards in October.

You can keep track of their progress via: http://nccastaff.bmth.ac.uk/ergophobia/ and www.daretobedigital.com.

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Students Get Animated in Dare to be Digital