Saturday 7 July saw myself and Anish Raja (DigiLocal@Bradley Stoke) heading up to London for the prestigious BAFTA Young Games Designer awards 2018!
BAFTA don’t release how many young designers enter the competition, but it’s run nationally across the UK. I know at least half a dozen other young people from the West of England region entered so Anish did exceptionally well to be selected as a Finalist.
In total there were 40 games on display across four categories:
- Game Concept (10-14yr)
- Game Concept (15-18yrs)
- Game Making (10-14yrs)
- Game Making (15-18yrs)
Anish was in the Game Concept (10-14yrs) and up against some very stiff competition.
In the end, the award went to Dalvia & Tiya Dhillon with their game concept for addressing mental health issues: Trapped
I was there as a Nominated Mentor of the Year. An amazing and very unexpected nomination, especially as you aren’t told who’s nominated you until they play the supporting video clips from your nominators.
I was completely floored when Primrose & Alex from DigiLocal@Barton Hill came up on the big screen!
Ultimately the mentor award went to Adam Syrop for his work with youth offenders.
However, as my nomination was the only one that draw a collective ‘Aww’ from the audience over Primrose’s statement, I think I was the real winner!
All told a fantastic day out, and I’ll be encouraging all young people within the DigiLocal communities to enter their ideas next year. We’ve developed some additional materials to help structure ideas and present them to the BAFTA judges.
We’ve also got more challenging projects to help develop those critical story-telling, and software engineering skills for a great game production.