Fifty schools entered the Creating Futures Flash Animation Competition, run by the National College of Design and Technology.
The brief was to design and produce a Flash animation which promoted a New Zealand product or service.
Chris Lam, Katie Xie and Jarrad Salmon designed games for the New Zealand Dolphin and Whale Trust with which to educate primary school pupils about conservation issues for Hector's dolphins.
In the competition, Jarrad came first, Chris second and Katie third equal. Each won an iPod for their efforts.
Jarrad said his "concept came easy" but creating the game, using Adobe Flash CS4 software was "challenging".
In his game, dolphins fired bubbles at items which threatened them, such as plastic bags and bottles, and ate fish.
It took about two months to complete the project and he was "really surprised" when he was placed first.
Chris and Katie's games were both based around a quiz which aimed to educate children about the dolphins.
A future in computing was in their sights as Chris planned to study computing at a tertiary level and Katie wanted to become an animator because she loved drawing.
Bayfield High School was the only school in Dunedin offering a web design course, which all three pupils took.
Co-ordinated by IT manager Rob Wood, the "computing academy" taught pupils design skills, coding and programming language.
"It's refreshing running a computing course because the kids are so engaged. You have to run them out of the classroom at lunchtime and that wouldn't happen in a maths room," he said.