| |
This year's IGF Main Competition finalists will now be revealed on January 7th, since the judges require a couple of extra days for final checking. (In addition, we're also getting all IGF entrants to provide us videos of their games where possible.) Expect the announcement to appear here some time in the morning, West Coast U.S. time -- and good luck to all.
The organizers of the 2009 Independent Games Festival have announced a record turnout for this year's IGF competition, with a total of 226 entries in the Main Competition (an increase of 30% on last year's 173 entries), and a total of 145 Student Showcase entries (up over 15% on last year's 125 entries).
In addition, information on the 226 separate IGF Main Competition entries, including screenshots, descriptions, and links to official game websites, are now available to view on the official IGF website.
In addition, the 145 IGF Student Showcase entries are also available for viewing on the official IGF website, with descriptions, screenshots, and official website information.
The IGF judges, which currently comprise notable journalists,
indie and mainstream game creators, are now in the process of judging this year's titles. with almost $50,000 in prizes to be handed out, including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Finalists will be announced in early January 2009, and winners, as picked by the 2009 IGF judges, will be announced on stage at the prestigious Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
The organizers of the Independent Games Festival Mobile have revealed a total of 107 entries for the second year of the event, more than doubling the amount of entries seen in the inaugural competition. The entries were bolstered with a strong showing from the emergent iPhone and iPod Touch platform, but entries spanned platforms including mobile phones, DS, PSP and the Zune.
The event, a sister competition to the main IGF event, has seen a host of notable independent projects enter the contest -- for which $30,000 in prizes are to be awarded at GDC 2009 next March. Nvidia is Platinum and Founding Sponsor for the event, and the prize pool includes a Best iPhone Game, presented by Gold Sponsor ngmoco.
A full list of IGF Mobile 2009 entries is now available, including screenshots and details on each of the entries.
Firstly, we've now revealed the IGF judges for this year via IndieGames.com, with a host of top indie/mainstream creators and media deciding this year's honorees - with headshots and full bios now added to IGF.com.
Rather importantly, we're also issuing a reminder to all prospective entrants of the main Independent Games Festival that the deadlines are November 1st, 2008 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Main Competition.
In addition, the deadline is set at November 15th, 2008 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Student Competition. Finally, the sister IGF Mobile event, for iPhone and mobile device games, has its deadline on November 17th, 2008 at 11:59pm PDT. Don't be late!
Think Services, organizers of the Game Developers Conference and the Independent Games Festival, have entered a new partnership with high-profile iPhone game publisher ngmoco. The deal will add a $10,000 'Best iPhone Game' prize to 2009's Independent Games Festival Mobile, and increase the maximum amount of prizes in the hotly contested indie mobile competition to a record $30,000.
The partnership with ngmoco, the Kleiner Perkins-funded iPhone publisher co-founded by former EA executive Neil Young, includes a Gold Sponsorship of the IGF Mobile event, which is now in its second year. The mobile-centric indie event, originally created by Think Services and Founding Sponsor Nvidia, is expanding to include iPhone games this year.With last year's Grand Prize winner Critter Crunch already a successful title on Apple's handheld, organizers are expecting a surge in iPhone game entries.
For more information on IGF Mobile and entering this year’s competition, for which the deadline is November 17th, please visit the IGF Mobile website.
Submissions are now open for the second Independent Games Festival Mobile, celebrating creativity and innovation on handheld platforms from the iPhone through the cellphone, PSP, and DS - with finalists being showcased at GDC 2009, and a new 'Next Great Mobile Game' live pitch category added.
Following the success of the first IGF Mobile, a sister event to the main IGF competition, the second year of the festival, supported by Founding and Platinum Sponsor NVIDIA, will again feature independently developed handheld games for all mobile devices including cell phones, Apple's iPhone, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and Windows Mobile devices.
The competition will include a new category for developers to pitch new ideas at the GDC Mobile-hosted award ceremony. IGF Mobile submissions are being accepted at the official website through November 17, 2008; finalists will be announced in January 2009.
The organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced the nine winners of the Austin GDC IGF Showcase, picking the very best examples of 'local flavor' in terms of indie games from Austin and the Southern U.S. to be exhibited at the Austin Game Developers Conference from September 15th to 17th.
Some of the top local titles span the gamut from one-man teams through tightly focused console indies, including Texas-honed games such as physics-heavy iPhone puzzler Enigmo, CosMind's evocative art-game Glum Buster, Red Fly Studios' Wii/DS quirky Mushroom Men duo, knockabout Guildhall @ SMU student title ToyBox Heroes, online titles FireTeam Reloaded and Ashen Empires, previous IGF finalist Goo!, console downloadable title Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, and user-generated game website Mockingbird.
The Showcase winners receive complimentary passes and get to showcase their titles in a special IGF Pavilion at the Austin event, which this year features learning tracks including Online, Audio, Writing, Worlds In Motion and Game Career Seminar, and is hosting a local Independent Games Festival Showcase for the first time.
More information about the 2008 Austin Game Developers Conference - for which the early registration deadline is July 31st - is available at the official event website. The full list of the honored Austin GDC IGF Showcase winners is available here.
Think Services, organizer of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), is pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the 2009 Independent Games Festival (IGF). Submissions to the 11th annual festival are due by November 2008, with finalists to be announced January 5th.
Games selected as finalists will available in playable form on the GDC show floor and will compete for nearly $50,000 in prizes, including awards for Innovation, Excellence in Design, and the coveted $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Winners will be announced on stage at the prestigious Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Independent Games Festival Awards are held along the Game Developers Choice Awards and both award shows are part of the 2009 Game Developers Conference.
Over the past few years, the Independent Games Festival has helped guide the rise of the indie game scene by honoring and popularizing the best and brightest independent developers and their games. Former IGF winners include Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf, and World of Goo.
Notable evolutions to this year’s festival include:
- A number of new IGF judges, including Spore designer Chaim Gingold, World Of Goo co-creator Kyle Gabler, The Sims Studio head Rod Humble, Civilization IV co-creator Soren Johnson, Rock Paper Shotgun co-founder Jim Rossignol, and Crayon Physics author Petri Purho.
- Returning IGF judges include independent game creators Jon Blow (Braid), Raigan Burns (N+), and Derek Yu (Aquaria), game industry veterans Brian Reynolds (Big Huge Games), Chris Rausch (SuperVillain Studios), and Chris Charla (Foundation9), and journalists N’Gai Croal (Newsweek), Chris Kohler (Wired News), and Stephen Totilo (MTV News). The full list of judges will be announced in the near future.
- In addition to the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the awards for audio, art direction, design and technology, the IGF is presenting a new Innovation Award in the Main Competition. This new award is intended to honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development, allowing more esoteric ‘art games’ to compete on their own terms alongside longer-form indie titles.
“We’re delighted to welcome a new cadre of judges, alongside categories that encourage even greater experimentalism and innovation, to our industry-leading indie game competition”, said Simon Carless, Chairman of the IGF. “We’re very much looking forward to see what you crazy independent developers come up with this time round.”
Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent game developers; important dates for IGF 2009 are as follows:
July 1st, 2008 - Submissions are Open
November 1st, 2008 - Submission Deadline, Main Competition
November 15th, 2008 - Submission Deadline, Student Competition
January 5th, 2009 - Finalists Announced, Main Competition
January 19th, 2009 - Finalists Announced, Student Competition
March 23rd-27th, 2009 - Game Developer’s Conference 2009
March 25th-27th, 2009 - IGF Pavilion @ GDC
March 25th, 2009 - IGF 2009 Awards Ceremony
For a complete list of IGF 2008 event information, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website.
So, you may have spotted a just-debuted announcement about Austin GDC 2008 opening its registration - in there is the revelation that "an Independent Games Festival (IGF) showcase" will be part of the September 15-17th 2008 show.
However, that's all the information we've released thus far, so I wanted to explain in more detail and offer an informal call for submissions to this IGF Showcase. It will be significantly different from the traditional Independent Games Festival competition, summit and finalist exhibition that we hold every February/March at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. (Though it will be similar in that each picked game will be showcased in a special IGF booth, with free all-access show passes for the developers.)
Basically, we decided that the event doesn't necessarily need another worldwide indie showcase - especially as the Independent Games Festival at GDC does that on such a large scale already, and will always be our flagship event (call for submissions for IGF 2009 will be up in the next 4-6 weeks, by the way!)
In addition, the Texas/Southern game scene has such a rich and interesting tapestry, from Origin Systems to Gamecock Media Group and beyond, and we wanted to honor that by doing a special 'IGF Presents' and picking some 'local flavor' in terms of interesting startups, indies, and game creators from Austin and beyond.
So that's just what we are doing! This won't be a fully-fledged 'competition' as such, but the IGF organizers will work with some of our trusted advisors to pick a select amount of Texas/Southern indie game creators to showcase in a special IGF booth at the event. We've already been making semi-discreet enquiries and have a list of possible indies to choose from, but we're definitely open to more suggestions.
So, if you're a Southern developer (we don't yet have a precise geographical boundary - use common sense!) who would like to be showcased at the IGF in Austin in September - and bearing in mind you'll need to turn up in person and show your game to the assorted publishers, developers, and luminati in attendance, of course - then please email chairman@igf.com with the following information:
- Name/location of developer & URL of official webpage/full contact details.
- What's the game and what's its platform? Brief description, please.
- Can you provide us with links to screenshots, movies, or a playable version of your title?
- A few words about what makes you 'indie', in whatever abstracted form that phrase is valid nowadays.
We're looking for all kinds of neat independently produced games - both professional and student, PC and potentially console/handheld, offline and online - so feel free to contact us on or before June 15th with your suggestions, and we'll start announcing 'IGF Presents' showcase games soon.
Firstly, the Independent Games Festival organizers would once again like to thank entrants, judges, GDC attendees and media for making the 2008 Independent Games Festival and Independent Games Summit the best ever. With some major media coverage and a host of well-regarded winners, we're looking forward to making things even better for the 11th Annual IGF - look for announcements in late Spring.
In addition, IGF/GDC parent Think Services has extended its commitment to independent games over at the IndieGames.com Weblog, an independently-run guide to the best indie games being created right now. To further help distribution, IndieGames.com has just added a Game Of The Month feature, highlighting the best pay-to-download PC indie games, whether IGF-entered or not.
 |
Crayon Physics Deluxe, Kloonigames' 2D physics puzzle game that allows players to experience what it would be like to transform drawings into physical objects, was named the winner of the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 10th Annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards, presented at a ceremony this evening at CMP's 2008 Game Developers Conference (GDC).
Other major winners at the IGF ceremony included physics-based puzzle action game, 2D Boy's World of Goo, which won the awards for both Design Innovation and Technical Excellence, and Audiosurf by Invisible Handlebar which won the $2,500 Audience Award, after receiving the largest share of more than 3,500 votes cast online over the past two months at IGF.com.
The IGF awards have been described as the Sundance Festival of the videogame industry, and offer both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to the developers of the winning games.
Other award recipients included One Ton Ghost's comical treasure-seeking adventure Iron Dukes, which took the award for Best Web Browser Game, Kokoromi's Fez, which won for Excellence in Visual Art for its presentation of a 2D character exploring a 3D world, Invisible Handlebar's Audiosurf, a game that lets players experience their songs in real time, in full color, and in 3D, and which took the prize for Excellence in Audio, and, winner for Best Student Game, Synaesthete, a music-driven arcade-style shooter developed by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.
Another notable award given at the IGF ceremony was The Gleemax Award for Strategic Gameplay ("The Gleemie"), presented by IGF Platinum Sponsor, Gleemax, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.'s community for gamers. Three games were awarded "The Gleemie" prize package, which consisted of a custom designed trophy accompanied by a tiered prize package. (1st - $5,000, 2nd - $3,000, 3rd - $2,000).
"As the video game industry grows bigger by the day, it becomes even more important to give a voice to the independent developer," said Simon Carless, chairman, IGF. "This year's Independent Games Festival winners are showcasing how important independent games are -- both as an artistic movement and as accessible titles that are really damn fun to play."
The IGF awarded the following games in each category in the main competition -- each received a cash prize of $2,500 as well as sponsor-related prizes, and the Grand Prize winner was awarded $20,000.
Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Crayon Physics Deluxe, by Kloonigames
Best Web Browser Game:
Iron Dukes, by One Ton Ghost
Design Innovation Award:
World Of Goo, by 2D Boy
Excellence in Visual Art:
Fez, by Kokoromi
Excellence in Audio:
Audiosurf, by Invisible Handlebar
Technical Excellence:
World Of Goo, by 2D Boy
Best Student Game:
Synaesthete, by DigiPen Institute of Technology
Audience Award:
Audiosurf, by Invisible Handlebar
Gleemie Awards:
-- First Place: Desktop Tower Defense, by Handdrawngames
-- Second Place: Skyrates, by Team Skyrates
-- Third Place: Quadradius, by Quadradius
The voting for the IGF Audience Award will close in 24 hours, so if you would like to vote for your favorite IGF game, act now! Visit our Audience Award voting website to see which games have publicly available demos and to weigh in!
Click here to view the IGF news archive. |
|
