It seems like the gaming world has got over its desperation to be represented on mainstream television. With Wii Network Live or whatever, YouTube, and video content from websites far more professional than this one, the need has perhaps diminished somewhat.
Good for Channel 4, then, for sneaking out a series about the annual Dare to be Digital competition.
Crunchtime, broadcast in the much sought after ‘half seven on Sunday morning’ slot, follows the teams through the 2010 competition – which challenges teams of young people to go to Abertay University in Dundee and make a game in nine weeks.
The final episode of three is tomorrow morning, but the series is available on 4od and YouTube for at least the next couple of weeks.
It’s worth a watch. It’s a bit like The Apprentice – it’s ostensibly about teams competing against each other to complete a challenge – but with fewer morons and more programming.
There’s also plenty about gaming in general, though, touching on the subject of women in the industry in the second episode, for example. And Dundee itself features heavily in episode one.
It’s refreshing, in that it’s not so much a programme about games, as a documentary, the subject of which happens to be games-related. It’s almost like gaming is maturing as a medium…