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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.
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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!
The IGF organizers would like to remind everyone that the 10th Annual IGF Awards Ceremony will be held at the Game Developer's Conference, on 6:30pm Wednesday, February 20th, 2008, in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall.
In addition to the Best Student Game in the IGF Student Showcase, winners will be announced for the seven categories in the Main Competition:
- Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)
- Excellence In Visual Art ($2,500)
- Excellence In Audio ($2,500)
- Innovation Award ($2,500)
- Technical Excellence ($2,500)
- Best Web Browser Game ($2,500)
- Audience Award ($2,500)
Visit the IGF page on the Game Developer's Conference website for more information on the where and when of this great night!
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IGF Platinum Sponsor and Magic: The Gathering developer Wizards of the Coast have announced their own "Gleemie Award," giving IGF entrants and finalists a secondary cash and a chance for a distribution agreement, in conjunction with its recently launched community site Gleemax.
Wizards of the Coast says the prizes will be awarded "to those representing creativity in innovative strategic game design" at the forthcoming IGF Awards ceremony. Three of the seven finalists will be awarded a 'Gleemie' trophy and cash prizes of $2000, $3000, and $5000, respectively, along with the chance for distribution through Gleemax's portal for all finalists.
The seven finalists for “The Gleemie” are as follows, in no particular order:
Game 1:
World of Goo by 2D Boy
World of Goo is a physics based puzzle/construction game in which players control millions of goo balls to build structures and manipulate objects with the objective of rescuing as many of the lovable goo balls as possible. The game features five chapters, each one consisting of 10-15 challenging levels all taking place in a beautiful World of Goo.
Game 2:
Crayon Physics Deluxe by Kloonigames, of Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game that lets players experience what it would be like if the things they drew became real. The goal in the game is to collect yellow stars by manipulating the world through the use of objects drawn with a red crayon ball. The game is not only a test of skill and strategic game play, but of creativity as well.
Game 3:
Skyrates by Airship Studios
In Skyrates, players are airborne privateers that need to fight, trade and explore their way to fame and fortune in a fantastic world of floating islands. Every action players take has an effect on other players in the thriving online game world. Skyrates is an experiment in sporadic play, meaning the game can be experienced in several short play sessions rather than one large chunk of time. This accommodates players interest at all levels, regardless of whether they choose to be a peaceful trader, a careful diplomat or a bold fighter.
Game 4:
Depths of Peril by Soldak Entertainment
Depths of Peril is a single player action role-playing game (RPG) with strong strategy elements set in a fantasy world. As barbarian leaders, players protect the city of Jorvik by destroying threatening monsters and completing challenging quests. But defending the city is not the only goal as rival barbarian factions use diplomacy, trade, and at times, civil war to see who will ultimately rule the city of Jorvik.
Game 5:
Quadradius by Quadradius
Quadradius is a two player, head-to-head internet game that pits strangers and friends against one another in a battle of skill, strategy, luck and bluffing. Set in an industrial arena, players compete to destroy each other’s squadrons. The acquisition of various Power Orbs scattered throughout the game board adds an additional layer of strategy to the game. The Power Orbs allow many tactical combinations that can be used to attack, defend, or foil opponent's plans.
Game 6:
Desktop Tower Defense by Mandible Games
Desktop Tower Defense is a puzzle/strategy game that challenges a player’s desktop against waves of cute, but relentless invaders called “Creeps”. By strategically building towers to defend their desktops, players can shoot, trap, and lead the invaders through fiendish mazes as they try to overwhelm the desktop’s defenses. The object of the game is to stop as many invading “Creeps” as possible.
Game 7:
Polarity by Carnegie Mellon University - Entertainment Technology Center
Polarity is a 2D platforming/puzzle game based on magnetism. The goal of the game is to navigate environments and solve puzzles by using your suit's magnetic properties to attract and repel objects. Players can boost the suit’s magnetic strength or instantly switch its polarity throughout the game.
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The IGF Mobile organizers have announced the location and time of the awards ceremony for the inaugural Independent Games Festival (IGF) Mobile during GDC Mobile 2008 (February 18th-19th). The event is to be held on Tuesday, February 19 between 10:00am and 10:30am in Room 134, North Hall, directly after Anssi Vanjoki (Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia) delivers his morning keynote.
IGF Mobile finalist games will be on show at the IGF Mobile Pavillion in the exhibit hall during GDC Expo (February 20th-22nd).
Organizers of the 2008 Independent Games Festival (IGF) have launched the IGF Audience Award voting website, allowing game fans everywhere to download, play, and choose a favorite all of the eligible Main Competition finalist indie games which submitted a publicly playable demo.
Online voting is open now and continues through the day of the IGF ceremony, taking place alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards at the 2008 Game Developers Conference February 20th.
In addition to those available to play via digital download, all finalist games will be playable at the IGF Pavilion, February 20-22, on the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Expo floor. Finalists were chosen from a record 173 entries and represent the growth of the independent games movement with innovative games of excellent quality, across various platforms.
The CMP Game Group has announced a new sister weblog to Gamasutra and the Independent Games Summit/Festival, IndieGames.com - The Weblog (RSS feed), presenting the latest news, reviews and interviews from the burgeoning, increasingly important independent gaming scene.
The blog, built on top of the existing IndieGames.com website, is written from an independent perspective, thanks to veteran indie game expert Tim W. and co-editors, and has already added a 'Best-Of' section, featuring some of the more notable freeware and indie games of this and previous years.
IndieGames.com - The Weblog also includes interviews with notable game creators, coverage of both Flash and downloadable freeware and commercial indie titles, and plenty of other perspectives on the independent gaming scene - as well as a job feed from Gamasutra.com's industry-leading job section.
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The IGF Organizers have announced the 12 receipients of the 2008 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase awards, from a field of over 125 entries, including USC Interactive Media Program’s quirky The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, Sheridan Institute’s stylish booger-busting Gesundheit!, and The National Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment’s dual-perspective Half-Life 2 modification Flipside.
The Independent Games Festival Student Showcase website now features a complete list of all the showcase winners, including screenshots and links to videos and demonstration versions where available. Each winner will receive a $500 travel stipend to help aid their trip to GDC 2008.
In addition to PT Winterbottom, Gesundheit, and Flipside, other student showcase finalists nominated for the $2,500 Best Student Game prize to be given out at GDC include DigiPen Institute of Technology’s surreal flocking shooter Empyreal Nocturne, Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia’s playfully kinesthetic Crayon Physics, and Australian National University’s tactical space attrition game, Mayhem Intergalactic.
The full list of winners for the IGF Student Showcase, all of whom will be showing their games at the IGF Pavilion during Game Developers Conference in February 2008, are available here.
  The IGF Mobile organizers have announced the finalists for the inaugural Independent Games Festival Mobile from a field of over 50 entries, with nominations led by titles including Punch Entertainment's social networking game Ego and Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab's waste disposal strategy puzzle game Backflow.
The Independent Games Festival Mobile website now includes a full list of finalists, including screenshots and links to videos and demonstration versions where available.
The IGF organizers have announced the Main Competition finalists for the 2007 Independent Games Festival, from a field of 173 entries, with nominations led by titles including 2D Boy's physics construction game World of Goo and Invisible Handlebar's music-adapting puzzle racer Audiosurf.
The Independent Games Festival website now includes a full list of finalists, including screenshots and links to videos and demonstration versions where available.
The organizers of the 2008 Independent Games Summit have announced a first set of speakers, with notable indie figures including Alec Holowka and Derek Yu of IGF Grand Prize winner Aquaria, Kyle Gabler of World Of Goo, Dylan Cuthbert of PixelJunk Racers, The Night Journey's Tracy Fullerton and more in the first batch of announced lectures for the February 2008 event.
The 2008 Independent Games Summit seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from indie game distribution methods through game design topics, detailed postmortems of independent titles, digital distribution-centric business concepts, and much more.
Once again, the IGS is a sister event to the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Taking place on the Monday and Tuesday of Game Developers Conference 2008, February 18th and 19th, the event follows the successful Independent Games Summit in 2007, for which multiple videos have been posted online in the last few months.
The 2008 Independent Games Summit is available to attend by purchasing a GDC 2008 Summits Pass. In addition, other passes such as the GDC 2008 All Access Pass also allow entry to the Summit - register early to take advantage of registration discounts. More information on the line-up for the summit will be posted on the official Summit page on GDConf.com in the near future.
IGF organizers have announced that a record 125 entries have been received for the Student Showcase for the 10th Annual Independent Games Festival, for which winners will be announced at GDC 2008 next February.
The full list of impressively diverse student game entries, including details, screenshots, and links to official websites (many of which include downloads for the games) is currently available on the official IGF website.
The 2008 IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, the number of Student Showcase winners has been increased to 12, and each winner will receive a $500 travel stipend to help aid their trip to GDC 2008.
In addition, during Game Developers Conference 2008 itself, there will be a prize for best overall IGF Student Game awarded as part of the IGF Awards, with the finalists comprising all of the Student Showcase winners, and a $2,500 cash prize for the ultimate winner.
The organizers of the 10th annual Independent Games Festival have revealed a record 173 entries for the 2008 IGF Main Competition.
The record entry numbers have seen a host of notable independent PC, web-based and even downloadable console games entering the contest - for which almost $50,000 prizes will be given out at GDC 2008 next February.
A full list of IGF 2008 entries is now available on the official Independent Games Festival website, including screenshots and details on each of the games, and sister site Gamasutra.com has highlighted some of the notable games.
In addition, organizers are reminding entrants that the 2008 IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, the number of Student Showcase winners has been increased to 12. The deadline to enter the Student Competition is Monday, October 15th, 2007.
 Organizers are reminding entrants that submissions for the first-ever IGF Mobile competition, a sister competition run in association with founding sponsor Nvidia and awarding $20,000 in prizes to the best independent mobile phone, DS, PSP, and other mobile games, is still accepting submissions until Friday, October 26th.
Winners of the event will be recognized with multiple prizes at the IGF Mobile ceremony, taking place during the GDC Mobile event at Game Developers Conference on February 19, 2008. The event will run parallel to the main IGF competition, which retains its $50,000 prize pool and current categories.
 The 2008 judges page now reflects full lineup of new and returning judges for the 2008 IGF competition jury, with late additions to the roster including Fl0w co-creator Kellee Santiago alongside Big Huge Games' Brian Reynolds and many more.
ThatGameCompany's Santiago, who was previously a Student Showcase winner with student project Cloud, and Neversoft co-founder Mick West, an industry veteran who writes the 'Inner Product' column for Game Developer magazine, are added alongside Games For Windows magazine's Darren Gladstone to round out the new judges for the 10th annual competition.
The journalistic and content-centric contingent for this year's judging panel include Wired's game editor Chris Baker, Joystiq's Chris Grant, Wonderlandblog and Channel 4's Alice Taylor, Kotaku's Brian Crecente, and Joystick Nation author JC Herz.
The independent game stalwarts hopping onto the judging panel this time include Raigan Burns, previous IGF prize-winner with N (pictured), Indygamer editor Tim W., and TIGSource editor Derek Yu, as well as new additions Santiago and Wurster. Other notable 'mainstream' game industry judges returning this year include Sony and Ubisoft veteran Mark Deloura, Foundation9's Chris Charla, Nihilistic's Mark Cooke, Midway's Richard Rouse III, and Big Huge Games founder Brian Reynolds.
Again, keep in mind that the deadline for the main competition is October 1st (just 12 days away), and the deadline for the student competition is October 15th!
 The organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced the new judges for this year's 10th annual IGF competition, including high-profile journalists such as Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and indie creators including Derek Yu (Aquaria, pictured) and Don Wurster (Small Arms).
The full list of new judges thus far confirmed for the Independent Games Festival this year include:
- N'Gai Croal (Newsweek - veteran journalist)
- Brian Robbins (Fuel Industries - long-time independent game stalwart)
- Don Wurster (Gastronaut Studios - co-creator of XBLA title Small Arms)
- Derek Yu (Bit-Blot - co-creator of IGF Grand Prize-winning Aquaria and TIGSource.com blogger)
- Alec Holowka (Bit-Blot - co-creator of Aquaria)
- Stephen Totilo (MTV News - veteran journalist)
- Chris Rausch (Super Villain Studios - indie-centric developer of Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony)
A separate announcement next week will reveal the multitude of regular judges and additional names returning to the IGF for this year's event, including some familiar names from the worlds of journalism, indie games, and mainstream game development.
Keep an eye on the judges page as new judges are being added as they confirm their roles for 2008. Full bios and headshots will be available later this week.
Finally, keep in mind that the deadline for the main competition is October 1st (just 19 days away), and the deadline for the student competition is October 15th!
 The organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced a sister event for the handheld game industry, IGF Mobile, with entries open for innovative indie cellphone, DS, PSP and other handheld titles, and $20,000 in prizes to be awarded at GDC 2008 next February.
Submissions for the event are open at the official IGF Mobile website through Friday, October 26, and winners of the event will be recognized with multiple prizes at the IGF Mobile ceremony, taking place during the GDC Mobile event at Game Developers Conference on February 19, 2008. The event will run parallel to the main IGF competition, which retains its $50,000 prize pool and current categories.
IGF Mobile is launching with NVIDIA, creator of the GoForce family of GPUs for handheld devices, as the Founding and Platinum Sponsor. In keeping with the company’s philosophy of encouraging and fostering new technology innovation, NVIDIA is particularly supporting the ‘Innovation in Augmented Design’ category as part of its sponsorship. The prize specifically honors mobile games that were developed using GPS, camera, motion sensing, and WiFi elements, along with other unique and differentiating features.
Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent developers working on mobile platforms (focused on cellphone game development as well as PSP, DS, and other handheld devices) - for more information, please visit the official IGF Mobile website.
The mission of the IGF is both to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize and promote the best independent game developers. In order to help this year's finalists utilize the exposure the IGF provides, and to navigate the business offers and deals that typically follow, the IGF is adding free legal consulting to compliment its cash prizes.
Thomas H. Buscaglia, noted game attorney, has graciously offered his services for this year's prize pool. He has donated the following:
All Finalists - All finalists will receive a free copy of Buscaglia's Game Dev Kit. The Kit contains essential information and forms for new independent game developers: Starting a company, contracts and NDAs, and advice on managing copyrights and intellectual property ($295 value).
Category Winners - In addition to the $2,500 cash prize, winners of each of the seven major awards will also receive a free one-hour consultation with Buscaglia ($400 value).
Seumas McNally Grand Prize - In addition to the $20,000 cash prize, the Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner will also receive ten hours of free consultation with Buscaglia ($4,000 value).
About Thomas H. Buscaglia
Tom Buscaglia, the Game Attorney, is committed to helping independent game creators get the right start in the business. He has been representing developers in the game industry since 1991. In addition to his legal practice, Tom sits on the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association and chairs the IGDA Charitable Foundation. He speaks regularly at the Game Developers Conference and other venues.
More information on Tom is available on his website.
Expect more news to be posted as the IGF deadlines approach. Again, that's October 1st for the main competition and October 15th for the student competition (just 56 and 70 days to go, respectively)! For this update we have some great news for web game developers:
Kongregate Competition - Flash game site Kongregate is running a competition where its 10 highest rated games of the year, as of September 15th 2007, will be entered into the IGF "Best Web Game" category free of charge. If you have a free Flash game that you'd like to enter this is a great way to go about it.
Kongregate is an online hub for players and developers to upload their work, play games, and work together as a community. Go check out the site here.
Unity Competition - OTEE is running a game development competition for developers using Unity, their 3D game development tool. The contest is for online games played in a web browser using the Unity Web Player. In addition to a cash award and other prizes, the five contest finalists will each be entered into the IGF's “Best Web Game” category free of charge.
Unity is a modern cross-platform 3D game engine with an emphasis on ease of use. For more information on Unity and the development contest visit their contest information page.
Independent Games Summit Videos - Also, the IGS website has posted more videos of the great lectures and panels from the inagural Independent Games Summit. Telltale's Dave Grossman speaks about managing episodic game development, with some juicy bits on scheduling, and Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman talks about milking the casual cash cow.
Visit the IGS website for a listing of all of the videos posted so far.
Videos from the inaugural Independent Games Summit, a sister event to the IGF, are now being posted online. In the spirit of sharing the videos are being made available for free, both as MP4 files via archive.org and for online viewing via Google Video.
If you missed the Independent Games Summit, this is your chance to hear the best and brightest of indie game development speak about their craft. The videos posted so far include a Small Arms postmortem by Gastronaut Studios and the Physics Games Go Indie talk by Matthew Wegner.
Keep an eye on the Independent Games Summit website as more videos will inevitably be posted over the coming weeks.
The IGF is pleased to announce that we're opening up submissions for the historic 10th Annual Independent Games Festival, for which the awards will be handed out in February 2008 at Game Developers Conference. Firstly, we've now published a complete list of important dates for the IGF in 2007/2008:
| June 15th, 2007 |
Submissions are Open |
| October 1st, 2007 |
Submission Deadline, Main Competition |
| October 15th, 2007 |
Submission Deadline, Student Competition |
| December 3rd, 2007 |
Finalists Announced, Main Competition |
| December 17th, 2007 |
Finalists Announced, Student Competition |
| February 18th-22nd, 2008 |
Game Developer's Conference 2008 |
| February 20th-22nd, 2008 |
IGF Pavilion @ GDC |
| February 20th, 2008 |
2008 IGF Awards Ceremony (Winners Announced!) |
The 2008 IGF Main Competition will again be open to all independent developers to submit their games - whether it be on PC, console digital download, Web browser, or other more exotic formats. The prizes again total nearly $50,000, with a $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and the deadline to enter the Main Competition is Monday, October 1st 2007.
The 2008 IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, the number of Student Showcase winners has been increased to 12. The deadline to enter the Student Competition is Monday, October 15th, 2007.
[The 2008 IGF Mod Competition will not be taking place for GDC 2008, though we still very much appreciate the work of the mod community (hence the inclusion of mods in the student category), and are considering further competitions for this sector.]
In addition, the IGF is pleased to announce that it has appointed Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink as joint Content Directors for the Independent Games Festival, to help shepherd the expansion of the increasingly successful IGF.
Matthew and Steve collectively helped organize the successful Independent Games Summit at GDC 2007, and together work at the multiple IGF finalist and 2005 IGF Project Goldmaster award-winning Flashbang Studios (they’ve retired from IGF competition to help run the festival.) Simon Carless will also continue in his role as IGF Chairman, but with significant help from the dynamic duo.
If indie developers out there have any queries about the competition this year, please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions, suggestions, or concerns - the IGF staff can be reached collectively at the chairman@igf.com email address.
There's a full post about this over at CMP Game Group weblog GameSetWatch, but as it notes: "Helen Stuckey and compatriots at the Australian Center For The Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne... are mounting a new exhibition, 'The Best Of The Independent Games Festival 2007'... The free to attend exhibition, which is billed as 'A sensational selection of winners and nominees from the 'Sundance' festival for games', is open at ACMI from Wednesday, May 30th 2007 to Sunday, September 30th 2007."
Expect to see a full announcement of the 2008 IGF some time around the beginning of June, but we've had multiple requests for info about the contests and deadlines for this year, so here's the basic information:
- The IGF Main Competition will again be open to all independent developers to submit games for PC, console digital download, and Web formats, and the deadline for this year will be Monday, October 1st, 2007.
- The IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, it's likely that the number of Student Showcase winners will be increased slightly. The deadline to enter will be Monday, October 15th, 2007.
We are also planning at least one more
competition for this year - stay tuned for more information on this. The IGF itself will take place alongside the earlier GDC 2008 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco - the awards will be the night of February 20th, 2008, and the IGF Pavilion will be open from February 20th-22nd, 2008.
Click here to see full IGF Awards video!
Bit Blot's dreamlike 2D underwater adventure game Aquaria won top honors, collecting the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, at the 2007 IGF Awards. The winners were announced at the 9th Annual IGF Awards ceremony, the evening of March 7 at GDC in San Francisco.
This year the IGF awarded $50,000 in cash prizes to the lucky winners. Other major award recipients included Queasy Games' abstract shoot-em-up, Everyday Shooter, which grabbed the awards for Design Innovation and Excellence In Audio, upcoming Xbox 360 Live Arcade title Castle Crashers, which won for Excellence In Visual Art, Three Rings’ online title Bang! Howdy, which came out on top in the Technical Excellence category, and stylish Flash-based point-and-click puzzle adventure Samorost 2, which triumphed in the Best Web Game category.
There were two other notable Main Competition awards given out on the night – the Audience Award, adjudicated from public voting at major consumer game website (and IGF premier media sponsor) GameSpot, was won by Castle Crashers, and IGF Platinum Sponsor GameTap gave out $20,000 in advances for indie games to appear on its PC subscription download service, as part of its special GameTap Indie Award - with Everyday Shooter getting a $10,000 advance and Cryptic Sea's Blast Miner and Naked Sky Entertainment's RoboBlitz each receiving $5,000 advances.
In addition, the IGF Student Showcase recognized ten student-designed games and, for the first time ever, awarded a $2,500 Best Student Game prize. The award went to DigiPen Institute of Technology's fast-paced capture the flag game, Toblo.
The IGF Mod Competition, now in its second year, celebrated the best amateur mods of existing videogames with a new $5,000 award for Best Mod Game. Cut Corner Company Productions took home the Best Mod award for Weekday Warrior, their corporate office adventure mod for Half-Life 2, also the Best Singleplayer FPS Mod.
"We’re delighted to help support the originality of indie developers as they take risks to advance their field and help shift the paradigms of gaming,” said Simon Carless, chairman, IGF. “This year’s Independent Games Festival winners are taking indie games to an even higher level, with their blend of smart design decisions, stylish art, and adorable gameplay mechanisms."
IGF platinum sponsor GameTap has announced complete details of its special IGF award for this year, the GameTap Indie Award - the full announcement is over at Gamasutra:
"The three hand-picked recipients of the GameTap Indie Award will have the opportunity to have their titles showcased on the GameTap Service. Ricardo Sanchez, GameTap’s vice president of content, has selected these three games as outstanding examples of achievement in independent game development.
One award recipient will receive a $10,000 advance after signing a five year distribution deal to be a part of the new GameTap Indies label, while the two additional recipients will each receive a $5,000 advance after signing the same five year distribution deal to be part of the label. The chosen developers will be announced on stage at the Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 7. This award is in addition to the almost $50,000 of existing prizes to be given out to IGF winners."
This'll probably be the last update until the awards themselves, so check back here on March 7 to find out the lucky winners!
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