Full media story
Dare with Bamboo
4th May 2010
Go to the competition site now, click here.
Abertay University’s Dare to be Digital is expanding its range again this year with the launch of a brand-new competition in partnership with leading tablet maker Wacom.
The main Dare to be Digital contest attracted more than 100 entries by the closing date last month. Now, Wacom has chosen Dare to be Digital as its partner to run the first ever “Dare with Bamboo” - a compact version of Dare featuring Wacom’s innovative Bamboo range of interactive tablets.
Dare is inviting game design students to create “Bamboo Mini” games for Wacom Bamboo pen and touch tablets. “Bamboo Minis” are casual games or applications that highlight Bamboo’s unique technology.
As well as a big cash prize, the competition is offering student games developers a unique chance to get their work showcased in front of industry experts and, above all, have their game published to Wacom users worldwide.
Young adults who are not already part of a team that has submitted an entry to Dare to be Digital 2010 will be able to enter a game or application less than 3MB in size into “Dare with Bamboo”, using Wacom’s proprietary “Bamboo Dock” software development kit.
The “Bamboo Dock” SDK allows the game designer to exploit the huge variety of control methods possible via the digital pressure-sensitive pen, or direct through the fingers using a wide range of gestures and movements.
Would-be competitors in “Dare with Bamboo” must register their interest by 30 May at www.daretobedigital.com. Finished entries, which should be designed with general computer users in mind (as opposed to hardcore gamers), must be submitted by 11 July, and will be judged by experts from Wacom and the games industry. Five games will be chosen as winners, and showcased at the prestigious Dare Protoplay event during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, as well as being published on the Bamboo Dock platform where hundreds of thousands of Wacom users worldwide will be able to try them out. The winner of the £1,000 grand prize will be announced at Dare Protoplay.
Peter Kurstjens, New Business Creation Manager at Wacom Europe GmbH, says: “Dare to be Digital is a highly renowned competition. That is why we chose it for our first Bamboo Mini competition. We want to leverage the creativity of game design students to show the power of pen and multi-touch input for games. Besides a great prize, the students get a chance to publish their game to the Wacom user community worldwide through the Bamboo Dock platform. It is a chance that you do not get so often.
Gregor White, Enterprise Director of Abertay’s Institute for Arts, Media and Computer Games, said: “We are very excited to be working with Wacom to offer this exciting new addition to the Dare to be Digital experience for 2010. The Bamboo tablet encourages new and highly innovative approaches to interaction design that will stretch games creativity into wholly new areas, very much in keeping with the Dare ethos. We are looking forward to seeing the entries for ‘Dare with Bamboo’.”