Annual Indie Gamer Development Competition

[Sunshine]

I was thinking about the IGF and other such yearly programming competitions, when a thought came to me [a rare occurance indeed :p ]

Why not have a Annual Indie Gamer Development Competition? In order to award somthing to one of OUR programmers? It could be as little as a title: "Indie Gamer Game of the Year 1991" or some such.

All we would have to do is come up with a few criteria for judging, find a judge or two, and set a date for submission. :)

What'a think?

[GBGames]

I guess I don't get the difference between the IGF and what you propose. Or do you mean specifically for members of these forums exclusively?

[Lerc]

I guess I don't get the difference between the IGF and what you propose. Or do you mean specifically for members of these forums exclusively?It all depends on what you are after. How many movie awards can you think of? A lot of people think there are way too many but seriously doubt they will be reducing anytime soon. The reason for this is that they all give publicity to the films and publicity is good.

Of the Major awards they all have their own different slant. The Academy awards, MTV movie awards, Blockbuster, and golden globes all have significant differences in what they grant as merit and consequently provide a different award perspective. There are games out there that I would have rated higher than IGF winners, whatever demographic that puts me in could be better served by awards that takes a different perspective look at the games out there.

I'm not suggesting that we get another 50 different awards, You would end up with a diluted result, much like the cuurent 5 star award from many download sites.

[DavidRM]

To have a festival requires a venue. IGF is part of the GDC. Not only does it showcase independent games, it provides a steady stream of people to play them--and some of those people are publishers and executives.

If you want another indie game festival, you need to find a venue for it. That's the tricky part. And why a number of smaller film festivals latch onto the bigger ones. So just because GDC has the IGF already doesn't mean someone couldn't come up with another one. It wouldn't get all the "free" GDC press that IGF gets, but it could still work.

The IGC in October could feasibly support its own indie game festival, and to a certain extent it does. It's just not presented that way.

If there are more than 2-3 indie companies with viable games in a geographic region, they could probably start an event at a local internet/game cafe. They could setup a judging process, get submissions, and do a bit of publicity. It might not be *huge*, but with a good PR spin it could get local press coverage. Which would be handy for educating the masses that independent games exist and can be an alternative to retail.

It can happen. It *will* happen.

-David

[robleong]

I think this is a great idea!

[AK47FH]

A extremely far out idea!

[Sunshine]

Actually, I was just thinking of having a little contest to judge a few games, then the winner can say that he got "Game of the Year" from indie gamer.

Then give them a little graphic to put on thier website by the game.

But
they could probably start an event at a local internet/game cafe.
This sounds even better :D