IGF Main Competition

Game Eligibility - As in previous years, IGF entries, at the time they are entered into the Festival must not be in any way affiliated with or sponsored by any member firm of the Entertainment Software Association (a list of member firms can be found at http://www.theesa.com/members.html) nor ELSPA (a list of member firms can be found at http://www.elspa.com), nor subsidiaries of any of these firms (henceforth called "Ineligible Publishers").

Web Browser Games - This is a new category for 2006. When contestants enter the IGF Main Competition, they must specify whether the game they are entering is a 'Web Browser Game'. These games must run in both the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, may use the latest versions of the Flash, Java, Shockwave and Virtools plug-ins if desired, and will be additionally eligible for the 'Best Web Game' category.

Finalists: There are now specific finalists for each individual award, as opposed to a set of a generic finalists that could be eligible for any award. Anyone who is nominated as a finalist will be invited to show their game at the IGF, and all finalists will be eligible for the IGF Audience Award.

Appearance by proxy: IGF Competition entrants will be responsible for all their costs of travel, meals, accommodations and equipment in connection with the Festival and Conference. However, IGF Competition entrants who are nominated for an award, but are unable to attend, may officially nominate a proxy attendee (the name and contact details of which to be mailed to chairman@igf.com after the nominations are announced), who must perform the same demonstration and award acceptance duties as the actual creators.

IGF Student Competition

Middleware addition - There are now two categories in the student category - 'Games made without middleware' and 'games made using middleware.' To re-iterate, the 'games made without middleware' will take up 8 spots of the 10, and the 'games made using middleware' will take up 2 spots of the 10.

Main entry rules - For 'games made without middleware', all art and audio assets used in the game must be created by students. Code must be developed by students, however, using basic game development libraries that are free to use (or contain a small fee) in a published game (like DirectX) is acceptable. Please note that small-scale audio, physics, or other (such as fmod, OpenAL, SDL, QT) libraries are permitted for use in this category.

'Games made with middleware' rules - For 'game made with middleware', the entry is permitted to use any student-licensed or small fee-based graphics engine such as RenderWare, Virtools, Panda3D, and Torque, many of which have special educational versions available. Again, all art and audio assets used in the game must be developed by students. This category is specifically intended for those using complete graphics engines as a start point for their student game. However, the finished entry must be playable in standalone form - 'mods' of existing titles which require that original title for it to run will not be eligible.

IGF Modding Competition

Modding rules - The specific games to be included in the modding competition are Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Nights, and Doom3, and there is one overall 'best mod' category for each specific game. It's likely that a more comprehensive mod will win in each category, although entrants are welcome to enter any kind of mod for that specific game that they desire.

[If you have any other questions or issues that you need answered before the full rule-set appears, please contact the IGF Chairman.]