9th Annual IGF Awards Ceremony will be held at: on March 7th, 2007
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[05.11.07] Best Of 2007 IGF Entries Pop Up At ACMI There's a full post about this over at CMP Game Group weblog GameSetWatch, but as it notes: "Helen Stuckey and compatriots at the Australian Center For The Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne... are mounting a new exhibition, 'The Best Of The Independent Games Festival 2007'... The free to attend exhibition, which is billed as 'A sensational selection of winners and nominees from the 'Sundance' festival for games', is open at ACMI from Wednesday, May 30th 2007 to Sunday, September 30th 2007."
[04.30.07] Preliminary Info On 2008 IGF Deadlines Expect to see a full announcement of the 2008 IGF some time around the beginning of June, but we've had multiple requests for info about the contests and deadlines for this year, so here's the basic information:
- The IGF Main Competition will again be open to all independent developers to submit games for PC, console digital download, and Web formats, and the deadline for this year will be Monday, October 1st, 2007.
- The IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, it's likely that the number of Student Showcase winners will be increased slightly. The deadline to enter will be Monday, October 15th, 2007.
We are also planning at least one more
competition for this year - stay tuned for more information on this. The IGF itself will take place alongside the earlier GDC 2008 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco - the awards will be the night of February 20th, 2008, and the IGF Pavilion will be open from February 20th-22nd, 2008.
[03.19.07] IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards video...
[03.08.07] IGF Winners Announced! Bit Blot's dreamlike 2D underwater adventure game Aquaria won top honors, collecting the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, at the 2007 IGF Awards. The winners were announced at the 9th Annual IGF Awards ceremony, the evening of March 7 at GDC in San Francisco.
This year the IGF awarded $50,000 in cash prizes to the lucky winners.Other major award recipients included Queasy Games' abstract shoot-em-up, Everyday Shooter, which grabbed the awards for Design Innovation and Excellence In Audio, upcoming Xbox 360 Live Arcade title Castle Crashers, which won for Excellence In Visual Art, Three Rings’ online title Bang! Howdy, which came out on top in the Technical Excellence category, and stylish Flash-based point-and-click puzzle adventure Samorost 2, which triumphed in the Best Web Game category.
There were two other notable Main Competition awards given out on the night – the Audience Award, adjudicated from public voting at major consumer game website (and IGF premier media sponsor) GameSpot, was won by CastleCrashers, and IGF Platinum Sponsor GameTap gave out $20,000 in advances for indie games to appear on its PC subscription download service, as part of its special GameTap Indie Award - with Everyday Shooter getting a $10,000 advance and Cryptic Sea's Blast Miner and Naked Sky Entertainment's RoboBlitz each receiving $5,000 advances.
In addition, the IGF Student Showcase recognized ten student-designed games and, for the first time ever, awarded a $2,500 Best Student Game prize. The award went to DigiPen Institute of Technology's fast-paced capture the flag game, Toblo.
The IGF Mod Competition, now in its second year, celebrated the best amateur mods of existing videogames with a new $5,000 award for Best Mod Game. Cut Corner Company Productions took home the Best Mod award for Weekday Warrior, their corporate office adventure mod for Half-Life 2, also the Best Singleplayer FPS Mod.
"We’re delighted to help support the originality of indie developers as they take risks to advance their field and help shift the paradigms of gaming,” said Simon Carless, chairman, IGF. “This year’s Independent Games Festival winners are taking indie games to an even higher level, with their blend of smart design decisions, stylish art, and adorable gameplay mechanisms."
[02.27.07] GameTap Announces Indie Award!
IGF platinum sponsor GameTap has announced complete details of its special IGF award for this year, the GameTap Indie Award - the full announcement is over at Gamasutra:
"The three hand-picked recipients of the GameTap Indie Award will have the opportunity to have their titles showcased on the GameTap Service. Ricardo Sanchez, GameTap’s vice president of content, has selected these three games as outstanding examples of achievement in independent game development.
One award recipient will receive a $10,000 advance after signing a five year distribution deal to be a part of the new GameTap Indies label, while the two additional recipients will each receive a $5,000 advance after signing the same five year distribution deal to be part of the label. The chosen developers will be announced on stage at the Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 7. This award is in addition to the almost $50,000 of existing prizes to be given out to IGF winners."
This'll probably be the last update until the awards themselves, so check back here on March 7 to find out the lucky winners!
[01.26.07] IGF Audience Award Voting Open!
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!]
[01.26.07] 2007 IGF Schedule Detailed
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.
[01.04.07] 2007 IGF Student Competition Finalists Announced
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.)
[12.16.06] 2007 IGF Mod Competition Winners/Finalists Announced
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.
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:
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.
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.
[11.13.06] Student Entrants Revealed, Roll On Finalist Announcements!
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.
[10.17.06] Independent Games Summit @ GDC 2007 Announced
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.]
[10.17.06] Mod Entries, Thanks To Sponsors, Student Comp Reminder 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!
[09.11.06] Record Number Of Main Comp Entries, Mod Reminder! 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.
[08.28.06] IGF Main Competition Deadline - September 8
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!
[06.21.06] IGF 2007 Competition Announced
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.
[04.12.06] Post-IGF Thanks, Video, Feedback 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.
[03.23.06] IGF Organizers Need Sleep Badly 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.
[03.17.06] Final Pre-GDC Update Well, GDC is almost upon us, so here's a couple of points that you shouldn't forget:
- 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.
