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Google's Science Fair finalists want to find quasars and wake you with smells
Want to be inspired by the next generation's ingenuity, while simultaneously feeling like you've underachieved? Here are the global finalists for Google's Science Fair 2014! As with previous years, the entries are high-minded and often brilliant, as the young teams try to solve problems like cyberbullying, food scarcity and just waking up. The students, aged 13 to 18 years, come from across the world: For instance, Russia's Anastasia Korovyanskaya (aged 17-18) came up with an ultrasonic burner, while Pranav Sivakumar (US) in the 13- to 14-year-old category has proposed a method for spotting gravitationally lensed quasars. Judged by a panel of academic and industry leaders, competitors are vying for prestigious awards including a $50,000 scholarship from Google, a National Geographic expedition and a behind-the-scenes visit of Virgin's Galactic Spaceport. The winners will be announced on September 22nd, but meanwhile take a closer look at the finalists right here.
IndieCade 2012 finalists line up for judgement, awards on Oct. 4
IndieCade 2012 kicks off on October 4 in downtown Culver City, California, celebrating indie games and developers for four days across multiple venues. The Red Carpet Awards, held on the evening of October 4 and hosted by Felicia Day, honors the coolest, most intriguing games in the indie scene, and often serve as an indicator of future breakout hits: Past winners include Fez, Limbo, Braid, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP and Johann Sebastian Joust.IndieCade has announced the 36 finalists for the 2012 Red Carpet Awards, including Analogue: A Hate Story, Bontanicula, Dyad, Guacamelee, The Stanley Parable, Splice and more. Whether you want to see who's up for the big prizes, or just want a guide of prominent indie games to check out, find the complete list of IndieCade 2012 finalists below.
Dream Build Play finalists for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone announced, winners soon
Microsoft has announced the 40 finalists in its latest Dream Build Play competition, featuring standout titles developed with the Windows Phone Software Development Kit for the Xbox 360 or Windows Phone operating system.The games entered were judged on qualities like innovation, the production quality, and the fun factor, and all of the entries were narrowed down to these 40, with 20 on each system. The final prize-winning games will be announced in a few weeks from now in early September.The finalists come from developers all over the world, and include games like the zombie fighter RPG Dead Pixels, "fantasy flight game" Windhaven, and the electricity-powered puzzler, Super Volt. The final prizes in the competition include cash prizes and possible publishing agreements, but odds are that we'll see more than one of these titles make it out to public release after the competition, with or without Microsoft's involvement.
Semi-finalists revealed in Atari's Pong Indie Developer Challenge
Atari's Developer Challenge has been taking submissions for possible Pong-inspired iOS games since late February (Disclaimer: I'm serving as a judge on the final panel for the contest, though I haven't done anything yet and am not being paid for my time), and the company has finally selected 20 semifinalists from more than 80 submissions. You can read through the list of the semifinalist studios on the link there. Quite a few of them, as some quick Google searches will show, already have their own apps in the App Store. The next step for the contest will be for these semifinalists to put together some demo videos of their proposed projects, which will be due in June. We judges will get a crack at the proposals then, and finalists will be announced on June 19, with the full winners list announced in August. The winners will get their apps published by Atari, with proceeds split between Atari and the original creators. It sounds like the contest is going well. I look forward to seeing what's been submitted!
Indiecade 2011 finalists announced, include Fez, Skulls of the Shogun and Sword and Sworcery
The IndieCade Festival has announced its list of finalists for next month's event in Culver City, California, and it's going to be a packed house. There are no fewer than 36 indie titles on the list. From bigger profile titles like Bit.Trip Flux, Fez, and the XBLA-bound Skulls of the Shogun to smaller affairs like the great Desktop Dungeons and the five-year-old powered Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure, the festival's games run the gamut. There will be developers from all over the world at the event, and all of the finalist games will be playable at the festival on October 8-9, with the last 10 awards being passed out at a Red Carpet Awards ceremony on October 6. The finalists were chosen from 446 submissions to the festival by group of 100 jurors. Past IndieCade finalists have found lots of success, either as downloadable titles on PC, or even indie releases on XBLA or PSN. And with the quality in this year's list, that trend will likely continue.
Game Developers Choice Online Awards announces finalists, EQ to be ushered into Hall of Fame
It's not quite to the prestigious level of the Academy Awards -- yet -- but the Game Developers Choice Online Awards is fast becoming one of the more well-known and highly respected award ceremonies in the MMO world while only being in its second year. With October 12th's ceremony coming soon, the field has been narrowed by 400 industry leaders into a competitive pool of nominees in a dozen categories. The categories include Best Online Visual Arts, Best Social Network Game, Best Online Game Design, Online Innovation, Best Online Technology, Best Community Relations, Best Audio For An Online Game, Best New Online Game, and Best Live Game. Several popular MMOs, including RIFT, DC Universe Online, World of Tanks and Wizard101, are up for a possible award. In addition, the awards will recognize Kesmai Corporation founders John Taylor and Kelton Flinn for the Online Game Legend Award. EverQuest, too, will be getting its long-overdue kudos as it is ushered into the Hall of Fame. We'll be anxious to see which games grab the gold this fall, but until then we're just going to grouse that we weren't tapped to be one of the judges.
Microsoft promises Mango phones in September for Imagine Cup finalists
Another year, another Imagine Cup. The annual competition, sponsored by Microsoft, gives students the opportunity to apply technology to tackle hunger, poverty, and other global problems, thereby making the world a better place (for you and for me, and the entire human race). We'd say the finalists deserve a pretty cool reward for their efforts, right? According to a status update on the Cup's Twitter account -- an update that's conspicuously been pulled -- one of the prizes for finalists is a Windows Phone with Mango pre-loaded, a jackpot they'd receive by September. We're not completely certain if this will be a pre-release version intended for developers or if it's an indication that the final iteration will be ready for public use by this time; we've only heard that Mango's slotted for a fall release, so both are definite possibilities. Since many of these students are developers, however, it's entirely possible they'll receive a prototype device with an early version of the firmware. No phone could replace the warm feelings in their heart for such a great accomplishment, but at least they can share their joy with built-in Twitter integration.
Vote: May the best pumpkin win [update]
Finalist #1 Finalist #2 Finalist #3 Finalist #4 Finalist #5 Finalist #6 Finalist #7 Finalist #8 Finalist #9 Finalist #10 Update: And the winner is ... First, thank you to everyone who submitted a pumpkin carving for this year's contest -- you rock! Brilliant work. Now, after making many difficult cuts, the Joystiq staff has narrowed down the entries to the ten finalists you see above. (Note: Each thumbnail is linked to a larger image and description of the finalist posted after the break; when clicked, these larger images link to the even larger, full-size versions in our gallery.) The finalist with the most votes after a 24-hour period will be selected to win our grand prize. The finalist with the second-most votes will take first prize. Thanks for voting! [Note: Poll has expired.]
iPhone is dominating independent gaming
Our friends at Joystiq make a very insightful and very telling discovery: the iPhone more or less owns the finalist list for the 2009 Independent Games Festival Mobile category. 11 of the 14 contestants aren't on the Nintendo DS or PSP -- they're built and played on the iPhone and the iPod touch. The popular Fieldrunners and Igloo Games' Dizzy Bee are standouts, but even innovative games like Galcon and the pseudogame experience Ruben and Lullaby are being honored with nods.Very, very telling -- the relatively low cost of entry into the App Store and the versatility of Apple's SDK makes the iPhone/iPod touch a dream platform for independent game developers, and clearly, even with less than a year of development time, Apple's handheld is making a big splash in the industry. Sure, there's still a few pricing hiccups that need to be worked out to get bigger developers on board in a big way, but for smaller and single person independent game developers, there's never been a better platform on which to make and market your games.
