Dare to be Digital

[Yossarian]

The wait is *killing me*

Dare to be Digital is a competition run (initially) by a university here in Scotland. 8 teams of 5 get paid £170/week ($330ish) to make a game over the summer.

There are prizes for winning teams but really its all about exposure.

I'm part of a team that has entered this year and we were supposed to find out if we have been invited to interview or not today. Its 6.24pm now and we've not heard anything - which of course could mean nothing or any number of things but its the wait I tell you.. the wait is bluddy murder.

If we get invited, next wednesday, we travel to Dundee to pitch.

I think we have a really solid game idea, (doesn't everyone though?).

Even if we're told "tough luck" I'd rather know than not know. It's been almost two weeks since the application forms were submitted...


aaaarrrgggghhh

[sterlingice]

Keep us posted. I'm curious about how this goes :)

SI

[Yossarian]

news just in....

We have been invited to interview... Next Wednesday at 11.40am UK time.

Man.

From 77 teams down to just 8 at interview. And from them, 4 get accepted (this is the Scotland contingent).

Our game is a mobile phone based strategy game.

I just hope we can convince the panel of judges (who are all games professionals, I'm not sure WHO is on the panel, but I know that EA and Microsoft are going to have a representative there) that our game is exciting enough and that we can pull it off.

fingers crossed (do i feel a dynasty coming on here? :-p )

[ice4277]

Good luck!

[sterlingice]

Cool. Good luck :)

SI

[condors]

good luck, do the dynasty!

[Yossarian]

Well, our pitch / interview is on Wednesday, about 11.20ish.

We got really really good feedback from the judges based on our application.


Team Name: Evil Machines

Strong team, their relevant experience detailed very clearly.
Game description was quite clear, and they claim to have prototyped play on paper which helps. Furthermore, they provided references - always a help. The schedule is mostly okay, however I'd question the need to provide both a web game client and a mobile client since this is just a 10-week project.

There's clearly a market for it. Have conducted some limited research on their own steam, which is nice.With regard to market research, it may be worth considering clients for other platforms such as wifi-enabled handheld consoles and interactive digital TV.
Sounds like a fun idea, I'd love to play it.

The game does sound appealling. I'd recommend looking at refining the high level concept of the game however, making the dream sound a bit less geeky! A million second-rate game ideas start with "it is the year 2085. The earth is in the grip of an evil fascistic regime..." etc so it is to be avoided.

I would like to hear more about how play works - rules, toys, environment, and a walkthrough on paper of a typical play session.

Previous experience shows up in a couple of areas. Spend first week on planning, include placeholder art early, allow time for preparation of presentation.

Explores newer 'on-line' type market.
Seems to be a new idea, hard to tell if it wil be done in a way that audiences will find accessible.
Timeline seems very high level, but seems realistic.
Good experience in Code. interesting to see how artists work together - one of them new to games.
Great concept - not totally sure how gameplay works. How do people play together?
New technologies - I like transition from online to phones.

Because one of the main critisisms is that a couple of the judges (the above was compiled from five judges apparently) we are going to roleplay a game session a bit with screen mockups and 'acting' (cheesy)

We've spent a lot of time over the last few days playtesting and the art guys have been creating mock ups etc...

Here are a couple of pics of us 'in action'


Colin and Andy and Geoff http://www.davidlearnsgames.com/stuff/evilmachines/gamedesign.jpg

Colin and Andy http://www.davidlearnsgames.com/stuff/evilmachines/gamedesign2.jpg

I'm excited about the presentation but more than a bit nervous. This is a big deal for us. Its a rare opportunity in life for someone to give you help establishing unique technology / IP and Dare does that. If we get in, we stop being totally anonymous, get to demo our software at one of the two remaining UK game festivals (Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival) *and* have direct access to many experts from the industry, many of whom hold clout in their various companies.

We're planning on getting Tshirts made and trying to present ourselves as professional as possible (although, I'm aware that 'pro's wouldn't necessarily make teeshirts, we feel it will help establish our identity).

[JeeberD]

Make sure to let the judges know that you "know" Mark Vaughan... ;)

Best of luck to you guys.

[DanGarion]

Stop playing D&D and get to work!

;) just kidding.

Good Luck Man!

[RPI-Fan]

Wouldn't a business suit make you look more professional?

[Yossarian]

You're right, suits would look more professional. But the organisers of the competition specifically said "Don't wear suits, smart casual is fine".

We were thinking about suits prior to that.

Friends of ours who were in the competition last year (they didn't gel all that well as a team - and are now all employed in different games companies) had teeshirts made and when they recieved their acceptance letter, it made mention of the fact that they got apparel made.

[RPI-Fan]

You're right, suits would look more professional. But the organisers of the competition specifically said "Don't wear suits, smart casual is fine".

We were thinking about suits prior to that.

Friends of ours who were in the competition last year (they didn't gel all that well as a team - and are now all employed in different games companies) had teeshirts made and when they recieved their acceptance letter, it made mention of the fact that they got apparel made.

I'm not fashion expert, but T-shirts just seem so not-over-the-top. If it were me, I'd go with a more polo-shirt type deal (you can still get these printed).

[gstelmack]

Wouldn't a business suit make you look more professional?
In the GAME industry? Even our marketing people don't wear suits. Buyers wear suits. Khakis / polo shirt is about as dressed up as you want to be, otherwise you're just trying too hard...

Have you even SEEN a picture of E3?

[Ragone]

Hmm scotland games..

I'm thinking some sort of drinking Kilt wearing unintelligable badass hero in a side scroller. his weapon of choice will be the caber..

[Yossarian]

Hmm scotland games..

I'm thinking about an "american game" you go this big fat guy with a stetston and you throw money and burgers at people... :-p

The GTA games came from round these 'ere parts.

[Marc Vaughan]

Best of luck ...

[Yossarian]

Well peeps, cheers for the support.

I'm just about to head out for the 3 hour journey to Dundee.

We put a lot of work into our presentation over the weekend, fingers crossed...

[sterlingice]

Good luck :)

SI

[mhass]

If the response is bad, lie to us. We want good news.

[Alf]

yep, expecting good news tonight :)

[Northwood_DK]

Is this your team?

http://www.evilmachines.com/smash.jpg

http://www.evilmachines.com/

Good luck today.

[Yossarian]

That is us - although that's just placeholder thing. We have a badass logo now :-p

Well,

It was a really tough interview.

We were early so had about an hour to fret about all the details. We changed into our teeshirts and went downstairs at the alloted time.

Sarah (marketing girl) took a team photo (presumably so the judges could remember who's who when deciding later) and we were sent like lambs to the slaughter.

We had technical difficulties straight away. We couldn't get our laptop to display through the projector. They had a switch box we'd never used before but no tech support! After being reminded about time twice we managed to get it running. Unfortunatley the set up of the room (very intimidating) meant that the team was split on either side of the projector and because people spoke at different times, we had to change the person operating the laptop twice.

We did our pitch and then were (to put it bluntly) thouroughly shredded.

The panel never introduced themselves to us and I still don't know who was on it. One of the remaining judges asked us a couple of questions and the remaining judge let loose.

He attacked us (for want of a better word) on our business model, on our ability to deliver what we want on a mobile platform, on our marketing approach (mobile phone games == bubble gum, our game is more serious) the whole shebang.

He's the kind of guy who can really make or break your chances because he had such a strong personality you can imagine him being very forceful in argument.

Really, it was harrowing.

A real wake up call. If we learn nothing else from our endeavours, it has really driven home how you have to have a totally sound business model and marketing plan. Sure we'd considered these things, but not in enough detail to satisfy this one guy who was able to spot weaknesses at 50 paces.

At least this pitch didn't have our livelyhoods on the line. You'd hate to screw up the business model / marketing plan when you were responsible for 20 jobs or something.

We saw some funny teams, one lot dressed up as commandos, another dressed up like the guys from the chocolate orange. Sure they'll be remembered but I think the understated approach of teeshirts got the point across without being cheesy. How could I expect to be taken seriously if I had an ostrich costume on? (a la Ricky Gervais in The Office).

Anyway, it was a tough, gruelleing experience.

oh... and we got in :-p

[CamEdwards]

Congrats! And as for this...

[QUOTE=Yossarian]I'm thinking about an "american game" you go this big fat guy with a stetston and you throw money and burgers at people... :-p
[QUOTE]

I'd buy it in a heartbeat. And just think of the international audience. You could call it "American Pig" and become a multi-millionaire.

[JeeberD]

Congrats! :)

[sterlingice]

So, crappy experience but you made it?

Sounds like this is the precise reason why to have a marketing guy- slimy, can work around the asshats, and you don't really have to deliver what he says because he's the marketing guy ;)

SI

[Yossarian]

It was a difficult experience but it was enlightening. The guys on the judging panel were told to treat it as though we were pitching to them as games publishers, not for the competition.

Who knows, perhaps if it was for real, none of us would have been accepted? (well, I know this for sure since we don't have a demo running).

It was a good experience, just a difficult one.

[Blackadar]

Hopefully, you didn't sit around yelling "Lightning bolt, lightning bolt"

[Yossarian]

Howdy,

Two weeks in and we're having a ball. Twelve Hour days (only because they won't let us in outwith 9-9) seem like short afternoons because we're all so into this.

Its very exciting stuff and the competition is very high. Our leader Andy put a diary post up on the Dare site.

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/team_diary/full_story/?intStoryNumber=22

[Yossarian]

Diary updated again.

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/Diary/team/full_story/index.php?intStoryNumber=31

and a render of one of our characters in 3ds max (not the game)

http://evilmachines.com/uploadedmedia/matrix2.jpg

Our game will be isometric 3d on PC and top down 2d on phone so the guy in that shot probably won't get into that position in the real game.

[sterlingice]

Whoops. Missed the last updated because I got rid of my bookmarks a while back.

SI

[Yossarian]

Another week, another diary entry

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/Diary/team/index.php?intTeamNumber=59

The character is our 'specialist' a kind of female ninja.

Here's a sneak peak at our hacker character too:

http://www.evilmachines.com/uploadedmedia/hackerpage.jpg

[sterlingice]

Cool. Way to keep us updated :)

SI

[Yossarian]

End of week 5 today (officially the half way mark in the competition).

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/Diary/team/full_story/index.php?intStoryNumber=44

We're ever-so-slightly slipping behind in schedule now (uh oh). But fingers crossed we can make it up.

[moriarty]

End of week 5 today (officially the half way mark in the competition).

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/Diary/team/full_story/index.php?intStoryNumber=44

We're ever-so-slightly slipping behind in schedule now (uh oh). But fingers crossed we can make it up.

Well, you can always do like the rest of the industry ... release a half assed game and plenty of patches to follow. Might not go well with the judges, but at least it'd provide good experience.

Seriously, good luck though.

[sterlingice]

There's also the ever so time honored tradition of releasing it after a massive delay. :)

SI

[Yossarian]

Things are heating up now... We didn't have time for a diary entry last week, but squeezed one in today.

This is week 7. We really only have the remainder of this week and all of next week because we will lose a lot of week 9 and 10 for going to the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment festival and then for the final pitches etc.

As of right now, you can move your wee guys around and shoot at other guys but not much else. Of course that IS the basis of our game and a great deal of the other stuff (throw grenades, lay mines, heal units, 'stakeout' etc) hang off those two actions so fingers crossed it'll all come toghether.

Scary thing is that comparing our objectives for last week with those for this week, it's like last week never happened! the objectives are the same this week as last.

oh well...

http://www.daretobedigital.com/home/team_diary/full_story/?intStoryNumber=55

[Yossarian]

Well,

It's the end of week 9 and the competition is almost over. We stopped posting dev diarys because we've been way too pressed for time. This week has been really useful.

We had to go to the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, both as delegates to listen to talks and also as exhibitors, demoing our game for all and sundry. There was also going to be an award given out for 'most promising game concept' decided by industry types such as John Broomhall (sound behind tonnes of titles), Ian Livingstone (Games Workshop / Fighting Fantasy Books / Eidos), Jonathan Smith (Giant - publishers of Lego Starwars) and Charles Cecil (MD of Revolution - creators of Broken Sword).
This award is independant of the Dare competition but we really wanted it.

So I dusted off my personality (it's rarely used these days) and gave it my best. Tried to consistently pitch our idea / game as well as I could - I didn't know what 2 of the four judges looked like and rumour had it some had sent their children / family undercover to get the lowdown.

Unfortunately we didn't get the award (dang). It went to 'Fishisms' - a Tamagochi style game where you raise and breed fish and can customise the tank.

We got lots of great feedback though and hopefully we can make the required changes for next Wednesday's final presentations. I managed to catch Jonathan Smith and get some feedback. Basically I think there were two things going against us. Primarily - the fish game was percieved as being a better unit-shifter. They picked the game that they would try to take to market if they had to. Secondly, our art on the phone let us down. We made a big deal of the PC and Phone showing the same game and they didn't see that visually - tehy believed us and coudl see units moving around etc but when a red floor is blue on the other platform - and when the view changes from isometric 3d to top down 2d it breaks the illusion.

Our plan (3 days before the final... ) is to 'diagonalise' the mobile graphics and try to make them go kinda isometric too. Looking back on it, I have no idea why we didn't do this from the start - it's clearly the right idea (why make them too different? its EASIER to see when they look the same - providing clarity isn't an issue). I think we just looked at what was being done for strategy games on the mobile and fell in line (big mistake).

The festival has been great. I got to meet some amazing people (Think I pissed off David Braben by going on about how much I loved Frontier / Elite and not mentioning any of his later titles (oops)) and we made contact with many cool companies who we may get work from at some point.

Everyone seems to love our phone / pc connectivity technology and we're thinking about ways we could use that in partnership with other software houses. The really cool thing about it is that you can put a dumb interface on the phone but have heavy logic on the internet server - imagine if we did an interface for FOF / FM on the phone but could connect to a PC runnign a FOF server - you'd never have to be away from your gameplanning screen etc..;

We're looking at stuff like that and also trying to figure out if there's a big enough market for our own game to make it worthwhile for us to try to take it to market (probably a 6 month project). As it stands you can play the game on both platforms but to take it to market we'd need to make it so damn robust and probably spend a LOT of time reworking our interface.

We'll see how it goes. Keep you posted.

Btw.. our flyer is here: http://www.evilmachines.com/backup/flyer.jpg

[sterlingice]

Very cool. Sounds like the game is pretty much done.

SI

[Yossarian]

It is 'pretty much done' for what we're going to do at the competition.

It's an X-Com / Laser Squad Nemesis type game and at present, you CAN play it on both platforms, you can message other players and you can move your guys about and shoot at stuff (including a homing missile).

But you can't do everything we planned. We won't have the mission objectives, grenade, mine or hacking in the verison we end with here.

We had to dance around like twats today in front of camera. They're filming a Dare to be Digital video for Gamer TV. Totally embarrasing, I'm totally not cut out for tv. I froze like an ice-lolly.

[Yossarian]

Well folks,

The judging was on Wednesday and prizes were on thursday.

Nervous as heck, and not at all pleasant - until....

They announced that we won the prize for Technical Excellance - and our team leader won Best Team Leader.

So well chuffed - i'm just up (12.19pm) after a very very heavy night. Chuffed to bits and planning world domination.

Official dare article: http://daretobedigital.com/home/news/full_story/index.php?intStoryNumber=115

Our divx promo video is at:

http://www.evilmachines.com/uploadedmedia/EvilMachines_CCW_Divx.avi

Thanks to anyone who cared enough to follow this (slightly long winded) thread!

David

[JonInMiddleGA]

Congrats Yossarian & team.

[sterlingice]

Um... what's chuffed?

Congrats on the prizes. I hear 2000 pounds can buy a lot of booze and women- do either of those have to do with chuffed? ;)

Also, is there a pic in the article with you guys?

SI

[Yossarian]

Chuffed == happy

http://daretobedigital.com/home/news/full_story/news_image/index.php?storyno=115&pic=4

picture is the one with us in it. I'm the guy roughly in the middle grinning at the team leader