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As part of the 9th Annual IGF
Awards, major consumer game site GameSpot is now hosting the voting for
the 2007 IGF Audience Award. From February 9th through March 7th, gamers are encouraged to vote for their favorite indie game from a pool of eligible IGF Main Competition finalists which are hosting playable PC demo versions online at the official IGF Audience Award page.
So go over there, download/play the demos and full games, and vote for your favorites - it's always fun to see the fans pile on and try to take their favored game all the way to the $2500 Audience Award prize!
[A couple of other updates - firstly, the Independent Games Summit is now sold out following overwhelming demand - thanks to all that registered. However, the two IGF sessions within GDC itself are still open to attendees - the State Of Indie Games roundtable will be on Thursday 8th at 2.30pm, and the State of Indie Student Games roundtable will be on Friday 9th at 2.30pm. Please attend if you possibly can!]
Preparations are now well underway for the 2007 Independent Games Festival proper, so we thought a quick update with a listing of upcoming times and events was in order:
- February 2007: Voting will open for the GameSpot-hosted 2007 IGF Audience Awards: watch this space! All IGF finalists who were able to submit a playable demo (or had significant public play opportunities in the last year) are eligible, and the one with the most votes picks up the $2,500 prize.
- March 5th-6th, 2007: The first-ever Independent Games Summit will take place on the Monday and Tuesday of GDC, including a keynote from indie legend Jeff Minter, plus key speakers from Three Rings, Reflexive Entertainment, Telltale
Games, The Behemoth, Introversion, Valve, ThatGameCompany, NinjaBee,
Gamelab, and many more.
- March 7th-9th, 2007: The IGF Pavilion, which will have the creators demonstrating all 32 finalists in the IGF Main Competition, Modding Competition, and Student Competitions, will be open in the North Hall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco- 9am to 6pm Wed. and Thu., 9am to 3pm Fri. Be there or be square!
- March 7th, 2007: The Independent Games Festival Awards will take place at the Esplanade Ballroom in Moscone South at 6.30pm, with special presenters, exclusive cinematics, and over $50,000 in prizes to give away - the Game Developers Choice Awards immediately follow the IGF Awards.
- March 8th/9th, 2007 - An IGF state of indie games roundtable and an IGF student roundtable within GDC itself will informally discuss the state of independent games and the future of the IGF in a larger setting.
We're delighted to reveal the ten 2007 IGF Student Showcase winners, each picked from the 102 excellent student entries submitted this year. And the Student Showcase winners are (in alphabetical order):
- TU Wien's paper cut-out 2D rotation-based title ...And Yet It Moves.
-
Koln International School Of Design's extremely Gilliam-esque Flash soccer mini-game pastiche Ball Of Bastards.
- DigiPen's ingenious
action-oriented cartoon strategy game Base Invaders.
- Stanford University's touchscreen and voice-controlled multiplayer abstract strategic romp Euclidean Crisis.
- DigiPen's 2D innovative color-absorbing platform action title Gelatin Joe.
- Guildhall at SMU's stylized vertical shooter meets puzzle game Invalid Tangram.
- Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy's interactive singing game vs. action title Opera Slinger.
-
SungKyunKwan University's extremely original puzzle-sliding platform game Rooms.
-
Hogeschool van de Kunsten, Utrecht's city color-painting roll-around extravaganza The Blob.
- DigiPen's clever 3D block-manipulating shooter Toblo.
Thanks to all entrants! All of these finalist titles have won a travel stipend of
$500 to help them attend GDC in San Francisco this March, where they will show their game on the IGF Pavilion, and one of them will be awarded a Best Student Game prize of $2500 at the IGF Awards on the evening of March 7th.
(Two other things to note in passing - the 2007 Independent Games Summit keynote has been announced, and it's indie legend Jeff Minter - so check out the full line-up if you're interested in attending! In addition, there are two IGF-related indie sessions to take place during GDC itself on the Thursday and Friday - more info on those soon.)
We're very pleased to announce the four winners of individual categories in the IGF Modding Competition, each of whom will now compete at GDC 2007 for the overall IGF Best Mod award. Thanks again for all the mod entrants - we had an extremely strong field, and choosing the category winners was very tough.
Best Singleplayer FPS Mod has been awarded to Cut Corner Company Productions' Weekday Warrior mod for Half-Life 2 (Gamasutra interview). The student collective at the Guildhall at SMU produced a total conversion mod made in the vein of the old-school adventure games, set inside a modern corporate office environment, which includes physics-based mini-games such as office golf, darts, and trashcan basketball.
Best RPG Mod has been awarded to Ossian Studios' Darkness Over Daggerford mod for Neverwinter Nights. Set in the Forgotten Realms, and produced by former BioWare producer Alan Miranda, Darkness over Daggerford gives players a 25-30-hour RPG with a strong Baldur's Gate feel, including a new world map and extensive involvement from some of the top NWN game modders.
Best Multiplayer FPS Mod has been awarded to ES Team's Eternal Silence mod for Half-Life 2 (Gamasutra interview), which is an impressive sci-fi space combat/FPS hybrid that "pits two capital ships against each other in a seamless blend" of the two modes, and includes a battlefield as large as 32768 cubic kilometres.
Best Other Mod has been awarded to Ludocraft's Spawns Of Deflebub, a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 that mixes elements from dodgeball, pinball, billiards and Break-Out in a lunatic H.P. Lovecraft-inspired futuristic story setting, with impressive retro-psychedelic graphics. This esoteric mod has been constructed by the creators of last year's IGF Modding finalist Dragonfly Variations.
Congratulations to the four winners of the IGF Modding categories. They each get a $500 travel stipend to help them travel to Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this March, where they will show their mod as part of the IGF Pavilion. In addition, one of the four mods will be crowned as overall Best Mod at the Independent Games Festival Awards during GDC, receiving a cash prize of $5,000.
We're delighted to announce the Main Competition finalists for the 2007 Independent Games Festival, from an amazing field of 141 entries this year.
The full list of finalists for the IGF Main Competition, all of whom will be showing their games at the IGF Pavilion during Game Developers Conference in March 2007, are as follows:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Aquaria - Bit Blot; Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games.
Best Web Browser Game: Bubble Islands - dot-invasion; Gamma Bros - Pixeljam; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.
Design Innovation Award: Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Aquaria - Bit Blot ; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; Toblo - Digipen Institute of Technology; Toribash - NABI Software .
Excellence In Visual Art: Castle Crashers - The Behemoth; Golf? - Luke Hetherington, Alex Austin, Josiah Pisciotta, and Andrew Laing; Aquaria - Bit Blot; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.
Excellence In Audio: Bone: The Great Cow Race - Telltale Games; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; FizzBall - Grubby Games; Aquaria - Bit Blot; Racing Pitch - Skinflake.
Technical Excellence: Arcane Legions: A Rising Shadow - Slitherine Software; Armada Online - EvStream; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; Blast Miner - Cryptic Sea; Band of Bugs - NinjaBee.
Nominations are led by Bit Blot's dreamlike, innovatively controlled 2D underwater adventure title Aquaria, which garnered 4 nominations, including one for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Other Grand Prize nominees included Queasy Games' cleverly designed abstract shoot-em-up, Everyday Shooter, which grabbed 3 nominations in total - nominees for the top prize were rounded out by Peter Stock's intelligently complex physics puzzle game Armadillo Run, Three Rings' Wild West indie strategy MMO Bang! Howdy, and Naked Sky's Xbox Live Arcade/PC action-puzzler RoboBlitz.
Other notable IGF finalists grabbing nominations for design-related innovation include DigiPen-constructed first-person shooter set in a world of blocks (which act as both terrain and weapons!), Toblo, as well as NABI Software's extremely original turn-based ragdoll fighting game Toribash. Elsewhere, Best Web Browser Game finalists include Amanita Design's beautifully drawn adventure title Samorost 2, Visual Art finalists also have a plethora of highlights, including The Behemoth's Xbox Live Arcade title Castle Crashers.
Finally, the Excellence In Audio category includes Skinflake's Racing Pitch, in which the player uses a microphone to imitate a car engine in order to power his on-screen vehicle, and Technical Excellence also has a multitude of stand-outs, including Cryptic Sea's physics puzzler Blast Miner and EvStream's multiplayer space title Armada Online.
The winners of each of these categories, including an Audience Award for which every finalist is eligible, will be announced at the IGF Awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday, March 7th 2007 at Game Developers Conference, when more than $50,000 in cash prizes will be given away.
Thanks to all of the entrants into the 2007 IGF Student Showcase - we've now put up a list of the 102 entries for this year, and there looks to be a wide array of high-quality student titles on view again (just as in previous years, when games such as Cloud and Narbacular Drop were prominent!)
In any case, watch out for the finalist announcement for students on January 4th, 2007 - and before then, the Main Competition finalists will be unveiled on December 9th, 2006, and the Mod Competition finalists on December 18th, 2006. In between now and then, we'll also be making some announcements about key lectures, roundtables, and keynotes at the 2007 Independent Games Summit, also to be held at GDC next March, so watch out for that.
Something that CMP's game business/development site Gamasutra likes to do is interview IGF entrants and finalists about their games, and this is happening again this year - so far, Gama has chatted to the creators of Gibbage, Gamma Bros, Prime Time: Maths Adventure, Eets, Plasma Pong, SpaceStationSim, Minions Of Mirth, Everyday Shooter, Sim Tractor, Kudos, Aquaria, Golf?, Virtual Villagers, New Star Soccer 3, Armadillo Run, Motorama, and Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble! - click on each game name to read the interview.
Some of you may have spotted the news on Gamasutra that the Game Developers Conference 2007 website is open for business. As part of the new offerings for 2007 is a 'mysterious' new event on the Monday and Tuesday of GDC, called the Independent Games Summit. Well, the description speaks for itself:
"Featuring lectures, postmortems and roundtables from some of the most notable independent game creators around, including many of the Independent Games Festival finalists for this year, the 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, guerrilla marketing concepts, student indie game discussions, and much more."
This means that we'll have the Summit on the Monday and Tuesday (March 5th-6th, 2007), and then the Festival Pavilion itself open on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of GDC (March 7th-9th), meaning an excellent few days of indie content for all. We'll be rolling out further specifics on the content and inviting people to speak over the next few weeks. If you have content suggestions/ideas, please contact us - we'd love to hear about them!
[There are also two special new GDC passes to help usher this indie era in, with the IGS Expo Pass, which'll get you into the Summit earlier in the week and then the GDC Expo/Festival area later in the week, for a pretty darn affordable $275 before Jan. 31st. The IGS Classic Pass is also available for those who want to attend all the talks at GDC proper, as well as the Summit.]
Well, again, our thanks to those who entered the IGF Modding Competition in its second year - we had over 35 top-quality entries this year, spanning mods to titles from Half-Life 2 and Civilization IV through Unreal Tournament 2004, Max Payne, and even Heavy Metal FAKK 2 and Operation Flashpoint. We look forward to judging them, and category winners (which are 'Best Mod' finalists, and will exhibit at GDC) will be announced December 18th, 2006.
We'd also like to graciously thank our IGF 2007 sponsors, since we've now added Sony and Microsoft as Gold Sponsors of this year's Independent Games Festival, Ageia as the Mod Sponsor, plus GameSpot and Download.com (our Audience Award partners) as Premier Media Sponsors. Most of all, we've now added GameTap as our Platinum Sponsor for the 2007 Independent Games Festival. We will be announcing further specifics surrounding GameTap's sponsorship in the near future, so watch out for that. And once again, many thanks to all our sponsors, without which the IGF just wouldn't be possible.
The next deadline for prospective entrants is November 10 , 2006 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Student Competition, which is free to enter, and always receives a large and high-quality turnout of great indie student titles. This year, we have the conventional 10 'Student Showcase' winners for top game ($500 travel stipend), all of whom will exhibit on the IGF Pavilion at GDC, and for the first time this year, an overall 'Best Student Game' ($2,500 cash prize) - so get submitting!
Many thanks to everyone who entered the 2007 IGF Main Competition - we'll write more about it in due course, but there's a total of 141 entries into this year's Main Competition, including some pretty amazing indie titles - go browse their info pages at your leisure. The Main Competition finalists will be announced on December 9, 2006, after much frenetic judging has taken place. Also, we're finishing out our judge list in style with folks like Foundation9's Chris Charla and Penny Arcade's Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins.
The next deadline for prospective entrants is October 13, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Mod Competition, which is allowing mods from any game to compete - all mods are eligible. From the entrants, we will pick Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best 'Other' Mod finalists (each a $500 prize), and those winners will show at the 2007 GDC, competing for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize.
The first of the deadlines for the 2007 IGF is rapidly approaching, so this is an all-hands reminder that September 8, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT is the final date to enter your game into the IGF Main Competition. We've already had a bunch of neat entries, but there's going to be lots flooding in at the last minute, so our advice to you is to enter early (You can always upload a new version of your game via FTP before the deadline.)
Also, we're just finishing up our judge roster for this year, and have been adding notable journalists and bloggers from Wired, Kotaku, Joystiq, Edge and Wired News to our mainstream/indie game professionals from companies such as Big Huge Games, Nihilistic, Sony, Red Storm, Vicarious Visions, Microsoft, and Crytek.
Finally, something we keep meaning to mention - the Australian Center for the Moving Image in Melbourne is running a 'Best Of 2006' Independent Games Festival exhibition from now until late November, showing some of the highlights from last year's winners, including Darwinia, Cloud, Rumble Box, Weird Worlds and many more - thanks to Helen Stuckey and all the organizers for helping to put this together. Go visit if you're in the area!
We're pleased to announce the 2007 Independent Games Festival, relaunching for our 9th year with a new website and some subtle but delightful changes to the competition. You'll be able to find out more by checking the About page and the Awards page, but here's the basic goodness:
- the IGF Main Competition, a resounding success in 2006, has received a few minor tweaks (slight category name changes, a demo is mandatory to enter the Audience Award if a finalist), but continues with the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and multiple $2,500 awards for innovative design, audio, technical, art, and best web game. We're really looking forward to your entries, and the deadline this year is September 8, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT.
- the IGF Mod Competition, a big hit in its first year, is going even more freeform this year, and allowing mods from any game to compete - from Thief to Half-Life 2 to Oblivion to The Sims and beyond, all mods are eligible. From the entrants, we will pick Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best 'Other' Mod finalists (each a $500 prize), and those winners will show at the 2007 GDC, competing for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize. Deadline for entrants is October 13, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT.
- the IGF Student Showcase, which continues to be one of the most hotly contested parts of the Festival, we're continuing to honor the ten Student Showcase Winners with $500 travel stipends and a chance to show their game at GDC 2007. But we're also adding a $2,500 Best Student Game award, honoring the absolute best student game submitted to the IGF this year. Deadline for entrants this year is November 10, 2006 at 11.59pm PDT.
In addition to all this, we're pleased to announce that all Independent Games Festival finalists will also be playable in the IGF Pavilion at GDC from March 7-9, 2007, alongside an IGF/indie gaming-themed day of lectures and roundtables on March 6, new for 2007 to help coalesce the IGF community - more information on this will be released at a later date.
After some much-needed rest, we wanted to thank everyone for making the 2006 Independent Games Festival the best so far, by far. The IGF Pavilion and Mod Pavilions were buzzing for the entire show, a plethora of press (from the Wall Street Journal through Yahoo!, MTV, and Spike TV) covered the finalists and winners, and we had a defining moment to rival 2005's marriage proposal, in Introversion's Grand Prize acceptance speech. Congrats again to all the winners, and many thanks to our kind sponsors for making all of this possible. A few important points:
- If you didn't make it to the IGF Awards ceremony, or would like to see yourself onstage throwing green foam Darwinians into the audience, we now have a full video of the 2006 Independent Games Festival Awards, in Flash-streamable form. Feel free to point, marvel, and tell your friends! There's also a link to the 2005 IGF Awards video on the same page, available for the first time.
- The two IGF-related indie game panels that were part of GDC were also excellently attended, and agreeably ferocious, but we are committed to running many more IGF-related panels and tutorials next year, hopefully earlier in the week, to help get the community together before IGF Pavilion set-up. Stay tuned for updates!
- We will be announcing the 2007 IGF Competition in June 2006, and we're working on the exact rules, but we can tell you that the Main Competition and Student Showcase rules will stay basically the same. We are considering allowing multiple game mods to compete in the same category for the Modding Competition ('Best Action Mod', etc), and would appreciate feedback on the idea. One notable change, while not yet locked down, is likely to be deadlines, due to requests that the Student Showcase deadline be moved up.
Thus, we think it's likely that the Student Showcase deadline will be in September 2006, the Main Competition deadline in October 2006, and the Modding Competition deadline in November 2006. Confirmation of this will be in June. The IGF Awards will be held at GDC 2007, to be held in San Francisco on March 5th-7th, 2007. See you there.
But... the IGF 2006 results are up on Gamasutra! Many congratulations to all the winners, especially Seumas McNally Grand Prize victors Darwinia. Lots more press follow-up at a later date - look for IGF winners on Spike TV's 'GameHead' on April 7th, for one.
Well, GDC is almost upon us, so here's a couple of points that you shouldn't forget:
- You should go read GameSpy's excellent in-depth IGF preview, if you have a chance - as well as scouring Gamasutra and GameDev.net for the latest finalist interviews!
- The IGF Audience Award voting is now (as of 5pm PST!) closed - thanks to all who voted, we'll find out the lucky winner next Wednesday night at the IGF Awards itself.
- The IGF Pavilion at the 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, which includes over 30 pods showcasing all the IGF finalists, will be officially open from Wednesday 22nd to Friday 24th next week, during conference opening hours - 9am to 5.30pm. The IGF Awards will be held starting 6.30pm on Wednesday, March 22 at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, and we will post information on the lucky 2006 IGF winners online when it's done.
While you guys are all voting for the IGF Audience Award, you might want to take a minute to check out some of the recent IGF finalist press. Firstly, Gamasutra has been continuing with its finalist interviews, including Dodge That Anvil's Jack Grandchamp, The Witch's Yarn's Keith Nemitz, Dofus' Thomas Bahon, and Putt Nutz' Suzanne Brooks, as well as IGF Student Showcase finalists such as Cloud's Cloud Team, Goliath's Level 11 Games, Ocular Ink's Pistachio Productions, and Ballistic's Ballistic Team.
Secondly, GameDev.net has also been doing a plethora of great Main Competition interviews, including with Ankama (Dofus), Flashbang Studios (Glow Worm), Insert Coin (Rumble Box), Oddlabs (Tribal Trouble), Rabidlab (Dodge That Anvil!), 21-6 Productions (TubeTwist), Atomic Elbow (CrazyBall), Grubby Games (Professor Fizzwizzle), Ominous Development (Strange Attractors), and Pocketwatch Games (Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa).
Finally, the folks at BioWare sat down and interviewed the Neverwinter Nights 2006 IGF Mod finalists, providing more interesting discussions regarding the nominated games. Please mail us if there are any press links we've missed, too.
We'll update in the near future with lots of the press coverage the IGF finalists have been getting, but here's some great news for IGF fans - this Gamasutra story has full info on how you can vote for this year's IGF Audience Award:
"...In collaboration with the 8th Annual Independent Games Festival (IGF), major consumer game site GameSpot is now hosting the voting for the 2006 IGF Audience Award.
From February 22nd through March 17th, gamers are encouraged to vote for their favorite indie game from a pool of 19 IGF Main Competition finalists which are hosting PC demo versions online at the official IGF Audience Award page.
Many of the demo versions of the acclaimed PC indie titles which have become IGF finalists are available for download for the first time. The overall winner which receives the most votes will receive a $2,500 prize and the IGF Audience Award for 2006." We're looking forward to your votes, so play the demos and vote now!
[01.25.06] Adultswim.com Announces Special 2006 IGF Award
The IGF organizers are pleased to carry a special announcement from the Independent Games Festival lead sponsor, Adultswim.com:
"Adultswim.com, the Platinum sponsor of the 8th Annual Independent Games Festival, announces a special new $5000 prize for this year's IGF. We love great games and want to work with great game companies, so adultswim.com will select the top IGF Main Competition finalists to meet during the GDC. We'll announce the winner at the Independent Games Festival Awards ceremony, Wednesday night, 3/22. Publicity and worldwide fame to follow."
Thanks again to the Adult Swim folks for this generous prize. To be clear, this prize is eligible to any IGF Main Competition finalist. They'll be getting in touch with their chosen companies as Game Developers Conference 2006 approaches.
Since the IGF Main Competition finalists were announced, there's already been several further press items on the finalists. Leading UK game site Eurogamer reviewed IGF Grand Prize finalist Weird Worlds, after finding it when it was picked as a finalist. In addition, sister site Gamasutra is running a series of IGF Main Finalist interviews - so far including Professor Fizzwizzle's Ryan Clark, Dad 'N Me's Dan Paladin, Wildlife Tycoon's Andy Schatz, Rumble Box's Joe Bourrie & Patrick Hackett, and Tube Twist's Justin Mette.
In addition, we're pleased to announce that there will be two open-to-all IGF-specific roundtables at the 2006 Game Developers Conference. The 'IGF - State Of Independent Games Roundtable' is held on Wednesday March 22nd from 9.00-10.00am, and "is an open forum to discuss the state of independent games [and the IGF] in 2006."
Secondly, the 'IGF - State Of Independent Student Games Roundtable', to be held on Friday March 24th from 2.30-3.30pm, will talk about "the best methods to produce independent games in education... and suggestions for ways that the IGF Student Showcase competition might evolve." These open roundtables, moderated by IGF Chairman Simon Carless, will only be as good as the attendees, so if you're at GDC, please consider making an appearance!
So, here's the final set of announcements - the finalists for the first ever IGF Modding Competition. Competition in each of the categories was fierce, but here are the finalists:
IGF Best Mod - 'Half-Life 2': Dodgeball: Source, Dystopia, Eclipse, Hidden: Source, Plan Of Attack.
IGF Best Mod - 'Neverwinter Nights': Bitter Harvest, Hythum II: The Halls Of Kilgirn, Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 1, Runes Of Blood, The Hunt.
IGF Best Mod - 'Unreal Tournament 2004': Dragonfly Variations, HamsterBash, Path Of Vengeance, The Awakening, The Soulkeeper.
IGF Best Mod - 'Doom 3': Last Man Standing, Doom3[CC]. [No other entries were of finalist quality.]
Again, there's a new Gamasutra story with extra information on the modding finalists, which will all be showcased as this year's GDC. We're working with our judges, including specific mod experts from ModDB, the Vault Network and elsewhere, to determine the winners (a $2,500 grand prize in each category!), to be announced at the IGF Awards Ceremony on March 22nd.
So, with the help of our judges, we've exhaustively tested this year's IGF student entries, and, from possibly the best ever set of games, we've awarded the following titles as 2006 Student Showcase winners:
Student Showcase Winners: Ballistic, Cloud, Colormental, Ocular Ink, Narbacular Drop, Orblitz, Palette, Sea Of Chaos.
Student Showcase Middleware Winners: Goliath, NERO.
We've also posted a Gamasutra story with some extra details about the winners - each of them will be playable and on display at GDC in San Jose this March, so come and check them out! Winners, we will be contacting you early next week with more information.
Firstly, one of the IGF's media sponsors, Moondance Games, has begun shipping its officially IGF-sanctioned PC game compilation Independent Games to U.S. retailers. Previously IGF-entered games on the compilation (with developer permission!) include full versions of Dark Horizons Lore, Global Defense Network, Rocketbowl and Strange Adventures In Infinite Space, as well as demo versions of Gish, Creatrix and others, with significant other contributions from long-time IGF entrants Digital Eel, Chronic Logic and Large Animal Games.
In addition, following the announcement of the IGF 2006 Main Competition finalists, the IGF has seen news coverage from GameSpot and a host of other major websites, as well as some welcome love from webcomic Penny Arcade. Most recently, consumer game site Eurogamer featured impressions of the Grand Prize finalists, explained in engaging form. Look for more profiles of the finalists as GDC approaches.
Finally, we'd like to thank the new IGF sponsors signing up alongside AdultSwim.com, this year's Platinum Sponsor, and collectively helping make the contest possible. These include Microsoft as a Gold Sponsor, Epic Games as a Mod Competition Sponsor, and Digipen as a Student Showcase Sponsor. [Oh, and it doesn't really need to be said, but all judging of winners is done by our independent judges, and separately of those helping us facilitate the IGF through sponsorship this year.]
Following an amazing set of entries for this year's IGF, we're pleased to announced that the judges have picked this year's Independent Games Festival finalists, and they are as follows:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Darwinia, Dofus, Professor Fizzwizzle, Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa.
Best Web Browser Game: Dodge That Anvil, Moleculous, Dad 'N Me.
Innovation In Game Design: Rumble Box, Strange Attractors, Braid, The Witch's Yarn, Darwinia.
Technical Excellence: Saints & Sinners Bowling, Tribal Trouble, Tube Twist, Darwinia, Crazy Ball.
Innovation In Visual Art: Dofus, Darwinia, Putt Nutz, Glow Worm, Tommy And The Magical Words
Innovation In Audio: Professor Fizzwizzle, Saints & Sinners Bowling, Dodge That Anvil, Glow Worm, Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space.
All finalists are eligible for the IGF 2006 Audience Award. Each eventual award winner in these categories will receive a prize of $2,500, with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize being worth $20,000, and all finalists will be demonstrating their titles on the IGF Pavilion at GDC 2006 in San Jose next March, where awards will be handed out. Please note - the other finalist announcements (Mod Competition finalists, Student Showcase winners) will occur on January 15, 2006.
Thanks to all those who submitted their titles into the IGF Student Showcase Competition - we now have a full list of student entrants for those who want to check out the field. We had an excellent set of entries this year, and we're starting judging right now - we'll be contacting the entrants with more info in the near future.
We've finally added the updated judge list for the 2006 IGF competition, and we're delighted to have a great cross-section of game professionals, from developers from major studios (Nihilistic, Vicarious Visions, Shiny, Criterion/EA, Activision, Big Huge Games), through journalists from major indie game sites such as TIGSource, GameTunnel and DIYGames, all the way to indie developers behind former IGF-prizewinning titles such as Gish and N. Thanks again to the judges for offering to help out.
Thanks to all those who submitted for the inaugural IGF Modding Competition - we got some excellent, innovative mods for all 4 games (Half-Life 2, Doom 3, NeverWinter Nights, and Unreal Tournament 2004), and are really looking forward to judging them.
There's more information in this Gamasutra article, but to quote: "The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) has announced that it is presenting a Melbourne, Australia-based exhibition named 'Best of the Independent Games Festival', a selection of the most innovative and exciting new computer games from San Francisco’s 2005 IGF." The exhibition runs from October 12th to December 11th, and congratulations to all the games (including Alien Hominid, Gish, Wik, and Soccer Ref) that are included.
We've now added a page listing all 118 entries into the 2006 Independent Games Festival main competition - entrants and other interested parties, feel free to check out info on all the IGF combatants.
Well, the main competition deadline is here, and as this Gamasutra news story explains, we had a record 118 entries to the main IGF this year - thanks to all that submitted! We will be verifying uploads (apologies to the few of you who had FTP woes) and doing initial judge contact and allocation over the next few days. [If you'd like to patch your game, you can do so at any time - please upload a new version to the FTP with that day's date in the filename - you don't need to contact us.]
Finally, all those Half-Life 2, Doom 3, NeverWinter Nights, and Unreal Tournament 2004 modders should start submitting their entries - deadline for this part of the competition is November 1.
We're pleased to announce that the 2006 Independent Games Festival is now open for submissions - please feel free to submit your game or mod, and don't forget to keep a close eye on the deadlines, and submit early. Please contact the IGF Chairman if you have any issues in submitting and uploading your game.
In addition, we're proud to announce that the four titles that will each have a 'Best Mod' category for the first ever IGF Modding Competition are (in no particular order!) Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Nights, and Doom 3. If you're a modder for one of these titles, then you can enter now for your chance at a share of $10,000.
[UPDATE: To clarify a couple of frequently asked questions: you can re-enter your game this year if you've improved it from the version entered in IGF 2005. In addition, if you're concerned about the expense of getting to GDC 2006 as a finalist, remember that you can nominate a more local proxy representative to demonstrate and represent your game for you. Finally, if you're entering a web game, you can just provide us with its URL, and you don't have to submit the game via FTP as well.]
We're proud to announce the 8th Annual Independent Games Festival competition, with a number of exciting additions and changes. Please go to the About Page and read the Gamasutra news report to learn about all the changes for this year, but to briefly sum up:
- The main IGF competition now has a biggest-ever $20,000 Grand Prize, and the other prizes have also increased in value with the shift back to one central category.
- We're launching an IGF Modding Competition, using four major game titles for the 2006 Awards, and will need your help to vote on which games should be part of the competition.
- There's now a specific Best Web Browser Game category, for those smaller Flash or Java-based titles which might otherwise get overlooked.
- Continuing the extremely popular IGF Student Showcase, we're adding a smaller category for middleware-using student games.
- We've made a host of other smaller tweaks after consulting with the indie community, including the ability to be a finalist by proxy and clarifications on a number of other issues.
Most importantly, the 2006 IGF submission process will make things much easier for you to submit your games, and will launch at the beginning of August- we will announce prominently when you're able to submit your titles for consideration.
[04.11.05] IGF 2005 Pictures, Press Coverage
We've now completed the 2005 awards page for the IGF, memorializing the gallant winners. In addition, the Game Developers Conference site has added pictures of the IGF Pavilion and of the 2005 IGF Awards themselves. Also worth noting is some of the press around the IGF this year - from NewGrounds' photo diary of the event, GI.biz enjoying the atmosphere, GameDev.net interviewing the co-chairman, The Orange County Register covering local entrants, Wired News with a budget-conscious angle, GameDaily.biz on pre-show coverage, plus GameSpy highlighting the winners in its new indie column.
[03.10.05] IGF 2005 Winners Announced
Last night's ceremony in San Francisco brought laughter, tears, and even an unexpected marriage proposal, but the winners of the 2005 IGF have been announced. Congratulations to grand prize winners Gish and Wik, as well as Alien Hominid, Steer Madness, N, Global Defense Network, RocketBowl, Digital Builders for winning the Cartoon Network Project Goldmaster Award, and all the other finalists and Student Showcase winners. If you're at GDC, come and check out the IGF area on the 2nd floor of the conference, and thanks again to all IGF judges, supporters, and sponsors for making the 2005 IGF Awards so much fun.
[03.03.05] Attention IGF Entrants:
Moondance Games, an IGF Silver Sponsor, will be publishing a compilation product featuring games submitted to CMP's Seventh Annual Independent Game Festival. If you submitted a game to the 2005 IGF Moondance Games would like to speak with you. Please contact info@moondancegames.com for more information.
[03.03.05] IGF Student Showcase Finalists Press
Over at Gamasutra, there's a new feature up looking at the 2005 Student Showcase finalists in more detail, including screenshots and interviews with the 10 Student Showcase winners. As the piece says: "With the main IGF finalists continuing to get press... we thought it would be apropos to focus on a part of the IGF which sometimes doesn't get as much of a spotlight."
[02.28.05] IGF Finalists Get More Press
As next week's IGF Awards rapidly approach, yet more interviews and press coverage is continuing for the finalists. Over at CGOnline, there's an interview with Wik creators Reflexive Entertainment, as well as Supremacy creators Black Hammer Game. In addition, extremely comprehensive coverage is being provided by indie game site Game Tunnel's Countdown to IGF 2005, which includes multiple game reviews, interviews and features, and promised to report live from the festival.
[02.15.05] Press Coverage For IGF Finalists
Since the IGF finalists were announced, there's been significant coverage for the lucky games. In particular, media sponsor GameSpot has opened a special IGF micro-site where users can look at trailers and demos of the IGF finalists, as well as vote in the IGF Audience Awards.
In addition, CMP sister site Gamasutra has run indie postmortems, written by the developers, of Nayantara's Star Chamber, of Chronic Logic's Gish, and of Reflexive's Wik & The Fable Of Souls. Finally, GameDev.net is running interviews with IGF finalists Ultrafish, Max Gaming Technologies, Jeff Evertt, Slitherine Strategies, and Chronic Logic.
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