Families should play more games together and more girls should consider a career in the games industry, according to Swallowtail Games‘ Sophia George.
The company has just launched its first title, Tick Tock Toys, for Apple iOS devices, after scooping a Dare to be Digital award in 2011 and a BAFTA Ones To Watch award in 2012. They were then funded by the Abertay Prototype fund, with a grant of £25,000 to help complete the game.
Sophia went on record to say:
“Computer games can be incredible shared experiences for people of all ages, and Tick Tock Toys is the first of hopefully many games we will release for children and parents to play together.
“The popular stereotypes of gamers just being young men couldn’t be more wrong, but they still persist despite around half of all gamers being female – and women and girls of all ages playing and enjoying games every day.
“What’s really worrying, though, is that this male-dominated idea is so pervasive – and it influences what families think about games, and what young women think as they grow up and make decisions about their careers.
“I just hope that the release of Tick Tock Toys will help show young women that they can get into the games industry – and that they too can create the games they love to play.”
The media immediately jumped on this and several publications, including the Metro picked up the story.
We contacted Swallowtail directly and asked Sophia how the progression from the original competition, to BAFTA winner, to Prototype fund success to the game’s release has been for the team:
These past few years have been a whirlwind for all of us! It all started with entering Dare to be Digital in 2011, which was one of the best summers I’ve ever had! After Dare, a few of us from Swallowtail studied the MProf Games Development course at Abertay University for a year, which we all really enjoyed and our quality of work greatly improved. During that year we won the BAFTA Ones to Watch award, and also won funding from Abertay’s Prototype Fund. Abertay has been enormously supportive and we wouldn’t be here as a company without them!
At the time of writing Tick Tock Toys has been featured in around 40 App Stores all around the world, including:
Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom and Vietnam.
We’ll be following the success of Tick Tock Toys over the next several weeks and hope to speak to Swallowtail in the near future about the results of all this Apple love…
