London – The Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and the Serious Games Institute of United Kingdom (UK) announced two initiatives that aim to create opportunities for game companies from Singapore and the UK to work together – joint call-for-proposals on serious games and the set up of a Games Solution Centre in Singapore. Through the serious games joint call-for-proposal, companies can expect to receive mentorship from the Serious Games Institute in terms of game design and research and development (R&D) as well as market access to Europe for Singapore companies and Asia for UK companies. To support this joint call-for-proposal, MDA will commit SGD $5 million over two years to fund selected projects. This initiative will be a great opportunity for Singapore companies to expand its current development of serious games beyond the education sector to other sectors of the economy like healthcare and corporate learning. The deadline for submission of proposals is 30 April 2011. The second initiative, the Games Solution Centre will see Singapore game companies benefitting from the established R&D and training capabilities of Serious Games Institute. More than 500 game developers are expected to benefit from the Games Solution Centre over the next three years. The serious games training provided will be comprehensive, from concept development, technology research to prototyping. The Serious Games Institute will also partner Nanyang Technological University of Singapore to identify up to five students over the next two years to work on specific serious games projects in Singapore and UK. The Games Solution Centre will be located at Mediapolis Phase Zero in Singapore, an interim prototype of the future Mediapolis@one-north2 and targeted to be ready by the second quarter of 2011.