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Games students are winners in the Microsoft XNA Competition

Huddersfield computer games students do it again, this time at the x48 game-camp!

On Friday 20 March 2009 80 budding videogame design and development students from all over the UK took part in X48  a two-day intensive development session dedicated to gaming.

Using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio 3.0, X48 offered the student teams an unprecedented opportunity to be mentored by and have their work reviewed by computer giant Microsoft and UK broadcaster Channel 4  key sponsors of the event produced by Pixel-Lab.

The event was themed to challenge the students to develop games that look beyond the traditional puzzle or first person shooter in a bid to create new conversations around gaming and attract the attention of new audiences.

Students from the School of Computing and Engineering's BSc Computer Games Programming and BA Computer Games Design courses walked away with three of the six awards, including the first prize!

First Prize: Seavolution Huddersfield Green Team
Programmer: Jay Walton
Artist: Dan Fitchie

Second Prize: Involved Huddersfield Orange Team
Team Lead/Designer/Producer: Ben Hinchliffe
Lead Artist/Artwork: David North
Lead Programming/GamePlay: Karl Miston
AI Programming: Adrian Smith

Most Experimental Game: Chronofix Huddersfield Black Team
Tom Spankie
Chris Rickett
Sam Birch
Cheung Lap Pun

The winning team get passes for Microsoft's Develop Conference (including their travel and accommodation) and a Flip Mino each.