INDEPENDENT GAMES FESTIVAL POSTS RULES, GUIDELINES FOR 2007 COMPETITION
9th Annual Award Program for Indie Developers Features New Prizes, Surprises, Challenges
SAN FRANCISCO – June 27, 2006 – Rules and submission guidelines for the ninth annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) are now available. This year’s festival, which will award over $50,000 in cash prizes at a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco next March, features enhancements to the main competition, a restructuring of the mod competition and cash prizes in the Student Showcase category, including the first-ever Best Student Game award. The deadline for the main competition is Sept. 8, 2006. For the IGF Mod competition, the deadline is Oct. 13, 2006, and for the Student Showcase, the deadline is Nov. 10, 2006. The festival honors innovative videogames created by independent game developers and students.
The IGF was established in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, in the way that the Sundance Film Festival has benefited independent filmmakers. The IGF has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes and major recognition to innovative, independently created videogames from all over the world, from early pioneering titles such as Tread Marks and Shattered Galaxy, through recent stand-outs such as Alien Hominid, Gish, and Darwinia.
“We’re delighted to announce this year’s competition, and are really looking forward to seeing the innovative titles submitted this year,” said Simon Carless, Chairman of the Independent Games Festival. ”With the vastly expanded modding competition, the Innovation Award in the main IGF competition, and the new Best Student Game prize, we’re looking forward to another set of great indie titles.”
The main IGF competition will award five major prizes for Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio, Technical Excellence, Best Web Browser Game, and the standout Innovation Award, chosen from a pool of finalists. Additional honors will be presented for the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Independent Game of the Year, and the ever-popular Audience Award, which is voted online.
In this, the second year of the IGF Mod Competition, the competition has expanded, due to popular demand, allowing mods for any video game, past or present, to be eligible, as long as the mod has been created or updated in the last 12 months. Categories include Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best ‘Other’ Mod finalists, for which $500 cash prizes will be awarded. Those winners will compete at the 2007 GDC for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize.
The IGF Student Showcase continues to be one of the most hotly contested parts of the Festival, honoring 10 Student Showcase Winners with $500 travel stipends and an opportunity to show their game at GDC 2007. In addition, for the first time, the 2007 Festival includes a new Best Student Game Award, with a $2,500 cash prize.
All Independent Games Festival finalists will 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 unite the independent gaming community. The GDC, scheduled for Monday – Friday, March 5-9 in San Francisco, is the largest gathering of videogame creators worldwide. Developers interested in submitting a game can visit www.igf.com for official rules and entry forms.
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Is anyone else getting tired of the bright, colorful, chipper and obnoxiously feel-good quality of casual games?
Isn’t it time they “went dark”? (Maybe they’ve gone dark while I wasn’t looking? Let me know…)
The whole “Are games art?” debate starts sounding like two geeks breathing helium and piping up in squeaky little voices under this deluge of me-too skin-and-win cheerful-fairies-in-bottles shiny-jewels-in-spic-and-span-mine-shafts and other similar fare.
Where’s the blood? The angst? The anti-heroes searching for final damnation…or, maybe, salvation–if they’re wimps?
How about innuendo? Outright sex? Simple bitchiness? Skillful political commentary?
Anyone?
Are we all (and make no mistake, I include myself in this “we”) so focused on getting commercial before we get real that we put our best ideas aside for later–a “later” that might never come?
I’ve got “edgy” ideas for games, games that wouldn’t even be that hard to make. What am I waiting for? Someone else to do it first? To prove it’s a good idea? Am I scared of offending someone? Am I scared of failing? Or maybe succeeding?
Last week, both Eric Sink and Seth Godin talked about coupons. Both articles are great. Eric’s actually includes some “business transparency” where he discusses the results of his company’s May coupon experiment, with numbers, comparisons, and analysis.
Here is a short summary of my own experience with coupons, discounts, and sales.
Coupons & Discounts
For The Journal, I’ve used coupons for years. I didn’t originally offer coupons. But as both the price and popularity of the software rose, I began getting requests for discounts, especially from students. Seeing the value of “discounted sale” versus “no sale”, I implemented a discount policy, using coupons.
First, I decided on 20% as the standard discount I would offer. I figured 20% was enough to get attention (it gets my attention; 5%? 10%? I got better things to do, unless it’s a very expensive item), but not so much that I suffer for it.
Second, I had to let people know that the discount existed. Actually…I didn’t bother letting anyone know, at first. Paranoia, of course. I didn’t want to be flooded with requests for the student discount by people who weren’t students. If people asked for a student discount, I would give it to them. But they had to want enough to ask even without knowing if such a thing existed.
Then I realized I was getting in my own way. As laptops became less expensive, they were being toted into classrooms more and more. So selling to students became important to me. So I (finally) put word of the discount on The Journal’s Web page, along with a special landing page for students. I got more requests for the discount–though not so many that I worried about people taking advantage of me.
I received requests for other discounts, as well. Usually educators, though sometimes military personnel would ask as well. I would grant these requests, but, again, I didn’t advertise them on the Web page.
Currently, I offer the following discounts:
Students
Educators
Active US Military Personnel
Hardship
And they are plainly listed on The Journal’s Web page (under the “Buy” tab).
To get the discounts, though, the buyer has to ask for them. I have links set up on the Web page that automatically create an email with the send address and “I Would Like the Student Discount” as the subject line. I respond with the coupon code they enter on the payment Web page. To make it even easier to use, I also provide a URL they can click on that will automatically fill in the coupon on the payment Web page.
My initial paranoia at offering these discounts has proven to be unfounded. I am not flooded with requests for the discounts. And, interestingly enough, in a number of cases, because they have the 20% discount, and because it applies to any version of The Journal, people use the coupon to get a more expensive version–perhaps more expensive than they would have purchased anyway, certainly as much or more as the original, base price of The Journal.
On the game side of the fence, with Artifact we used to offer a “Family Pack”, which allowed players to buy Citizenship in the game for 2 or more accounts at a 15% discount. We intended it for families which had more than one person playing, like father and son, or two children. Instead, we discovered that players would pool their money and get a Family Pack.
The Family Pack was eventually discontinued. Not because of abuse, but from neglect. It just didn’t get used that much. I only remembered recently that we used to offer that because I had a request for it last week–the first request in nearly 4 years.
Sales
In January 2003 I ran the only sale of The Journal I ever offered. Users could 20% off purchases made from 31 December 2002 through 3 January 2003. I announced the sale on the Web page.
2 January 2003 set a single day new sales (versus upgrades) record that stood for a long time.
Sounds great, neh?
Here’s the bad news: All I managed to do was frontload the sales for January 2003. Sales for the month of January 2003 showed only 16% improvement from sales in January 2002. That almost sounds good too…until you realize that new sales in January 2002 (with no sale) had been 14% over January 2001. I can’t say for certain that January 2003 wouldn’t have had lower than a 16% improvement without the sale, but after the sale ended, sales slumped and didn’t pick up again until the last week of the month.
I learned a valuable lesson from that sale, though: Never offer a sale on your BEST days/weeks/months. (As I’ve mentioned before, January is traditionally The Journal’s best month of the year.) Instead, use sales to bolster what would otherwise be bad days/weeks/months. The trick, it seems, is to offer the sale in a way that doesn’t make your regular, full price purchasers just wait for the sale.
For Artifact, back in 2003, I used a summer sale to test a new price on the Full Access subscription. For the summer, we cut the price by 1/3. The previous months had seen dismal sales of the Full Access subscription, so we needed to try something, and a new price point seemed the best idea. But what new price point? We had an idea, but wanted to test it first. So I set the sale price, announced it, and watched. At the end of the summer, we decided that the new price point worked. The sale ended, and the sale price became the new price.
Overall, I consider the discounts I offer on The Journal valuable, both from a customer service point of view (I like to help out where I can) and from a tiered pricing point of view. The discounts make it possible for those who are more price sensitive to pay one price, while those who are less price sensitive pay another.
On sales, though, I’m less certain. The software I sell, which is based on people finding it, trying it, and deciding to buy it, is less prone to impulse purchases and thus, sales seem less useful.
I’m curious what experiences other people have had with discounts, coupons, and sales. If you have a minute, leave a comment.
-David
PS I just finished reading The Undercover Economist. In the book, the author discusses a lot about pricing structures and how to get customers to “self select” based on price sensitivity. It’s informative, and–I thought–fun to read.
If you have an established business (whether making games or anything else), it’s possible that the only really useful ideas are the ones that scare you.
If the idea doesn’t scare you, then you don’t see the idea as encompassing much risk. It’s “safe”.
Safe ideas will probably improve the status quo, but only incrementally. Mostly, safe ideas reinforce the status quo.
I’m a programmer-business owner. For me, the “safe” ideas for improving the business usually involve new features. I’m a good programmer. I can implement new features all flippin’ day–and have fun doing it. Risk? Hardly any. Except that maybe I’ll forget an option users want.
On the flipside, ideas that have a more marketing bent to them usually scare me. Advertise in print magazines? More aggressively pursue a particular market segment? Push into retail, even on a small scale?
Yup. Even just typing them up as “for instances” makes my programmer mind start thinking of excuses for why I should focus on implementing new features instead.
Fact is, nothing ever really gets done when you’re in your “comfort zone.”
If you’re trying to change something–in your business, your relationships, whatever–then you have to change the ideas that move you forward. If you keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting what you already have.
You gotta find the scary ideas.
-David
“If it scares you but doesn’t threaten your physical existence, then it probably threatens your world view and/or your self esteem. These fears should be faced, I think. Maybe even embraced. Your world view and self esteem need to stop getting a free ride.”
Screenshots sometimes give the opposite impression, but really, if anyone tried to sit and watch game developers…<shudder>
Imagine the play-by-play (by announcers Jim and Dave) for…
…Programmers:
“He’s leaning forward now…peering at the screen, Jim…I think he’s considering which STL iterator to use…or he’s passing gas…”
“Can you type like that, Dave? Even on a regular, keyboard? Damn…watch him hunt-and-peck that function out of thin air.”
“…and he’s doing another build. And maybe going to the john. We’ll be right back after these messages…”
“He’s running a debug build, Dave, trying to find that elusive freeze problem…the one that happens when he shoots the BFG 9000 at the slobbering demon. Look at that low framerate…”
“Look at that, Jim! He’s given Visual Studio the finger and he’s firing up Textpad! He’s gone command line!”
…Artists:
“And he’s placed another bush on the hill side…no…he’s moving it…he’s rotating it slightly…”
“Jim, do you remember when this model was just a reference drawing and a couple of cylinders? Look at it now!”
“(whispering)We’re going to try to get a closer look at his concept sketch…dear god, what is that?”
“Dave…why does he keep rotating the model into that angle? Am I the only one who finds that disturbing?”
“Wow, am I dizzy. The speed of the camera in that level editor makes me woozie…”
…Sound/Music:
“He’s modulating the pitch slightly…trying to evoke a mood, I think…can you ask him what mood, Jim?”
“I know it seems he’s just repeating the same sound effect over and over, but…look at the intensity in his face…he’s listening…or daydreaming…”
“…He’s given up trying to use a real circular saw for the sound effect. He’s going to start experimenting with…what’s he picking up now? I think that’s an electric sander…?”
“He was just telling me, Dave, that he’s wired his acoustic guitar with special pickups that feed into the software on his laptop, so he can record the sound and even generate sheet music as he plays…”
I won’t even bother satirizing producers and designers. Watching those people work is much like watching paint dry or grass grow. Though those points in the process when the producer writes checks (or explains why he’s refusing to write them), and when the designer gets disgusted and rips up everything he’s written to date can be somewhat entertaining.
As boring as it all sounds, G4 or ESPN-n will likely host a show based on exactly this someday all too soon…
