A team of computing students from the University of Wolverhampton and University of Birmingham have picked up the BAFTA ‘Ones to Watch’ award at the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards.
The team, named DarkMatter Designs designed Boro-Toro, a platform puzzle game which uses an innovative control system using Wii technology.
Since leaving University two members of the team now work for RockStar North, the British games company behind the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto games.
Guardian writer and professional grumpy man Charlie Brooker wrote a hilarious and unfortunately accurate article on the British Games industry this week.
…despite being about 10,000 times more successful than the British film and TV industries combined, the British videogames industry continually balances a pathological inferiority complex with a wounded sense of pride. Quite why it still wants validation from these older, fading forms of media is a mystery. It’s like a powerful young warrior disgruntled at being ignored by an elderly and irrelevant dying king.
And there’s another Birmingham angle to this. They developed the game last summer at Screen Media Lab in Digbeth as part of the Dare to be Digital project. They worked 7 days a week for about 2 months and were probably the most committed bunch of students I’ve ever come across.
BBC Midlands Today did a short piece on them whilst they were here.