First projects revealed for InGAME voucher scheme

First projects revealed for InGAME voucher scheme

The Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise (InGAME) project has announced the first five projects to benefit from its R&D voucher scheme.

Led by Abertay University, in partnership with the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews, the £11.5m InGAME R&D collaboration aims to deliver innovative research, R&D support for the Dundee games industry cluster and develop a model for UK-wide games sector innovation.

Last year, the project launched the InGAME R&D Voucher Scheme, allowing games companies, businesses and non-profit organisations to pitch for blocks of academic expertise, resources and support worth up to a maximum of £5,000 per project.

This model allows voucher-holders to quickly develop and test new ideas, de-risk investment, prove concepts and assess the feasibility of creative and commercial opportunities.

The five initial projects selected by the InGAME panel include:

• Ranya Al Ghazi, a Masters student at the University of Dundee, will create a prototype digital training tool for Forensic Odontologists. The resource would train users in how to identify a disaster victim from dental data, but crucially can be accessed from anywhere, as travelling to remote locations for training can be prohibitively expensive. It is hoped the tool could be used in higher education curriculums and made available to dental practitioners and businesses online.

• Zero Waste Scotland will be making initial steps towards the production of a new educational game aimed at promoting sustainable living. Proof of concept work will be carried out by InGAME to create an initial design for a digital educational game or interactive comic.

• Hyper Luminal Games are creating a dark fantasy narrative game set in an alternate Edwardian Dundee. InGAME will design and deliver a series of cultural sector workshops to generate authentic material for inclusion in the game, de-risking the development of the new IP.

• Women in Games will collaborate with InGAME on the creation of an innovative membership model to scale-up the organisation and realise a vision of gender diversity across the UK videogames industry. A pilot initiative to create an online community of companies, professionals and students/graduates will be launched in Dundee.

• Auxworks, a pre-incorporation start-up that specialises in audio software and experiences for interactive entertainment in mixed media, will receive support to focus the commercialisation of their innovative physics-based tool, including audience insight from potential customers of the product.

The window for the second round of funding vouchers is now open, with expressions of interest invited up to Friday February 21 via the InGAME website.

Project Director of InGAME Sean Taylor said: “I’m delighted that these five projects have been awarded funding and it’s really pleasing to see such a diverse range of collaborations getting underway.
“We had a fantastic response to the first round of our R&D Voucher Scheme and we are now actively encouraging both games studios and other businesses to make pitches for the next phase.”