We won the BAFTA Young Game Designers Hero Award!

On Saturday last week, a small gaggle of Molecules headed into sunny London to receive a very special prize – we had won the BAFTA Young Game Designer’s Hero Award!

For those that may not be familiar, the BAFTA YGD Hero Award is presented to an industry professional or development team for their support to young game designers, and runs alongside the BAFTA YGD competition. This competition is open to 10-18 year olds who love to code, draw or write and encourages participants to turn their gaming idea into a reality (along with winning amazing prizes and meeting some of the industry’s biggest names)! It’s a really fantastic opportunity for all the kids involved and we were so honoured to be presented with this very special YGD award.

Here at Media Molecule, we are all so passionate about encouraging the next generation of games makers into the industry and supporting them as much as we can. We also love to inspire creativity in people of all ages through our games, something we’re continuing with our next creative game Dreams. We try to open our doors as often as we can to schools, universities and visitors to give them a sneak peek at what games development is really like.

Harvey Elliott, Chair of the BAFTA Games Committee, said:

I'm also proud that we are recognising Media Molecule as the YGD Hero Award winner this year, as a fitting recognition of their portfolio of games that inspire such a breadth of creativity, as well as celebrating educators who have supported the initiative and helped to inspire these talented young people towards a career in our dynamic and thriving games industry.

– Harvey Elliott, Chair of the BAFTA Games Committee

Thank you so much Harvey, and thank you BAFTA from all of us here at Media Molecule. We will treasure this award for a very long time and it will have pride of place on our awards shelf.

Here’s a few snaps from the event, taken by Michelle and Jamie! Don’t they all look lovely :)

And here's a very special video made by BAFTA which was played live at the event! It's a wonderful little short featuring our fantastic directors discussing what inspires us and why we make games. Thank you BAFTA! <3