igf-2011
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Independent Games Festival 2012 accepting submissions
Independent game makers: did you know there's, like, a whole festival for you? The Independent Games Festival isn't the "funnel cakes" type of festival, but rather the "widespread recognition and cash prizes" kind of festival. If you'd like to participate in the annual pageantry, the IGF's organizers are now accepting submissions. If you're a student, the deadline for you to submit your world-changing (or just cute!) indie game is October 31; the deadline for the main competition is October 17. Chances are, you'll like the changes being implemented this year. According to a letter posted by IGF chair Brandon Boyer, the judge and jury system, which includes "our 150-200 judges recommending games in certain categories, and discipline-specific juries of 8-10 subject matter experts assigned to each award," will be returning from last year. But the prizes for award winners chosen by those juries have changed. They're bigger. If you win the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, you'll receive $30,000, with which you could certainly fund the development of a small game, or get part of the way through the title screen of the AAA shooter you've suddenly decided to make.
IGF 2011 audience voting now open
Voting for the Independent Games Festival (IGF) Audience Award (i.e. the Popularity Contest Award) is now open to the masses ... who will likely end up picking Minecraft, we surmise, based on our own comprehension of basic math. Hopefully, those other indies have good marketing and PR departments ... what? Unlike previous years, the IGF Audience Award is available to any game chosen as a finalist, not just the ones with public PC demos. The reasoning, noted by IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer, is that many of the games have been available at other events, or have beta and other versions that fans may have checked out. Voting will be open until midnight (Pacific) on Friday, February 18. At a minimum, for the sake of humoring some idea of competition, please try the other "available" game demos before just voting for Minecraft.
IGF announces 2011 Student Showcase winners
The 2011 Independent Games Festival has named the winners of this year's Student Showcase. Created by student teams all over the world, each of the eight titles will be featured and playable at the 2011 Game Developers Conference next month. The games also serve as finalists for Best Student Game at the IGF awards, which will be presented on March 2. The finalists cover a wide swath of styles and gameplay concepts, from ambient shooters to Myst-like adventures. And then there's the one about an octopus trying to make it in human society. See the list of nominees, with links to their IGF pages, after the break.
Independent Games Festival 2011 competition finalists announced
Out of nearly 400 entries, the 2011 Independent Games Festival has narrowed down finalists into six categories for another year's festivities, culminating in the actual awards presentation on March 2. Featured prominently in this year's awards are world creator Minecraft and the terrifying Amnesia: The Dark Descent, both taking three category nominations. Supergiant Games' Bastion and QCF Design's Desktop Dungeons each earned two. Aside from being granted free passes to this year's Game Developer's Conference (where the IGF awards show happens), finalists must present "playable versions of their game to all GDC attendees at the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor from Wednesday, March 2nd through Friday, March 4th." That means, after winning the $20,000 grand prize, that team has to stay on the show floor and contain their explosive excitement for the next two days, while dullards like ourselves ask questions about this and that. The ultimate game? Perhaps! Head past the break for all the finalists broken down by category.
Nidhogg, Hazard, and more nominated for IGF Nuovo Award
The Independent Games Festival has announced the nominees for the 2011 Nuovo Award, a special category within the IGF for "abstract, short-form, and unconventional game development." In other words, weird art games! "I think what we've decided now is that even more light needs to be shed on this particular sub-section of the ever-growing sub-section that indie games already occupy in the wider gaming sphere," IGF chair Brandon Boyer told Joystiq, "the bit where developers are truly pushing at the edges and limits of what games can and probably should grow to encompass, whether that's videogames that move off the screen and into the playspace of the participants themselves, or games that tackle documentary, more personal and otherwise autobiographical subjects, or games that simply tonally run counterintuitive to the kinds of emotions games usually elicit." The eight nominees include the following: Monobanda's Bohm, a game in which you control the life of a tree. A House in California by Cardboard Computer, a "surreal" adventure game about four characters exploring a house. Nidhogg, Messhof's two-player, side-scrolling versus fencing game. Dinner Date by Stout Games, in which you listen in on Julian Luxemburg's thoughts as you follow him through the agonizing wait for his date to show. Loop Raccord by UFO on Tape creator Nicolai Troshinsky, a game based on video editing -- you have to create "continuous movement" by stringing together clips from archive.org. The Cat and the Coup by Peter Brinson and Kurosh VaiaNejad, a "documentary game" from the perspective of former Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh's ... cat. Copenhagen Game Collective's Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now, a one-button game for up to eight players, with rules that players must enforce themselves (or choose not to). Hazard: The Journey of Life by Demruth, an abstract first-person puzzle game in which the world is constantly changing.
Independent Games Festival expanding focus to include handheld titles
As the Independent Games Festival enters its thirteenth year, chairman Brandon Boyer has announced a couple of significant changes to the awards format. This year, handheld games -- including those for DS, PSP and iPhone -- will be included in the main judging and be up for the same awards as non-portable titles. A new "Best Mobile Game" category is also being added to the IGF Awards suite; the separate IGF Mobile Awards of years past has, effectively, been rolled into the main ceremony. The next IGF Awards event is scheduled for March 2, 2011. Additionally, the field for the IGF Nuovo Award, which is given to more "abstract" entries, is being widened from five to eight titles. Finally, judging will be overhauled: 170 IGF member judges will evaluate the initial entries, recommending them for specific categories, which will then be judged by smaller, more specialized panels to determine a winner for each award. The Independent Games Festival runs from February 28 through March 4, 2011, during GDC 2011 in San Francisco. Submissions are now being accepted.
