Dare to be Digital gets major technology backing

This year’s Dare to be Digital student competition has secured massive backing from the tools, middleware and hardware industries.

Tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment and technology will be supplied to all of the teams working in the Dare hothouse in Abertay, a gruelling ten week schedule starting June 8th.

On the tools side, Autodesk will be providing copies of 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox to the teams, while Adobe will supply copies of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

Microsoft has offered up Visual Studio 2008 Professional and XNA Game Studio 3.0, including technical support, while Hansoft will be providing project management support while CVSDude will help teams with their source control management.

Emergent Game Technologies has also partnered with Abertay to offer all students copies of its Gamebryo Lightspeed rapid prototyping engine. Intel is providing Core i7-based machines and Graphics Performance Analyzers, while amBX will be supplying teams with amBX hardware, the amBX SDK, and technical support.

“We are delighted to have such huge buy in from our technology partners, in addition to the industry support we are receiving from developers," said Paul Durrant, director of business development at Abertay University.

"The students taking part in this year’s competition will now have the chance not only to work with some of the best talent in the business, but also to develop their games on industry-standard hardware and software. One of Dare to be Digital’s strengths in workplace simulation is the provision of both mentoring by the games industry and studio-standard technology in a close to real world environment.”