Twang! Student Developers Claim BAFTA Prize

A team of students from Skuvde University and Abertay University have won the BAFTA "Ones to Watch" award for Twang!, the group's entry into the 2010 Dare to be Digital game development competition. The students, under the name "That Game Studio," were finalists in the University of Abertay Dundee's yearly Dare to be Digital competition, and were one of three teams eligible for the BAFTA prize. That Game Studio members include Jocce Marklund, Annette Nielsen, Linus Nordgren and Marcus Heder from Skovde University in Sweden, along with Abertay University's Thomas Finlay. Twang! is a multiplayer free-for-all racing game in which players use grappling hooks to avoid obstacles and outlast competing rivals. “That Game Studio produced an exceptional game, that’s both incredibly fun to play and shows that these are young professionals with a very bright future ahead of them," said Dr Louis Natanson, Academic Director of the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games at Abertay University. “The standard we expect each year at Dare to be Digital is incredibly high – the student teams that come to Abertay University to build their games are among the most promising anywhere in the world. Previous Dare winners have gone on to jobs with the world’s leading computer games companies, including Rockstar, Sony and many, many others. We are absolutely sure that this year’s winners will follow in those trail-blazing footsteps.” Abertay University is now accepting applications for the 2011 Dare to be Digital competition.