Independent Games Festival China 2010

Overview | Competition | Rules |Key Dates | Jury | IGF China 2009 Winners | About IGF | Entry Form

Overview

In 2009, the Independent Games Festival China was held for the first time and garnered more than 200 entries —108 for the Main IGF competition and 125 for the Student IGF competition. Submissions came from all over the world including China (Hong Kong and Taiwan as well), the Philippines, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan, Australia, Iran, Korea, India, and more.

During the awards ceremony, seven of the 14 finalists won various prizes from the main competition and student competition. The overall quality of the submissions was excellent, and the exceptional quality of the winners' entries was beyond the judges' expectations, setting a great tone for future IGF China Competitions.

Following the first year's success, the 2nd Independent Games Festival China will return in 2010, featuring the IGF Main Competition, IGF Student Competition, IGF Pavilion and the IGF Awards Ceremony.

The 2010 IGF China is composed of three main elements:

The Independent Games Summit
The Independent Games Summit will be held on December 5th (Sunday), the first day of GDC China 2010. It will highlight the best and brightest of independent game development, with discussions ranging from indie game distribution methods through game design topics, guerrilla marketing concepts, student indie game discussions, and successful stories of IGF China winners.

The Independent Games Festival Pavilion
Located on the show floor at GDC China and accessible with the Expo, Main Conference or All Access Pass, the IGF Pavilion showcases all the finalists' games in playable form. Members of the development team for each IGF finalist will be on hand to discuss and demonstrate the game and talk to top game publishers and distributors attending the show.

The Independent Games Festival Awards
The IGF Awards will take place during GDC China, and is a major celebration of the best in indie gaming. Authorities and technology specialists from international and domestic game companies, the advisory board members, speakers of GDC China, and the IGF China jury judges will be invited to attend the awards.

The IGF China competition will have a diverse, leading set of judges which include representatives of different backgrounds from mainstream game industry, to press/media representatives, as well as school officials and significant independent developers.

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Competition

IGF Main Competition

Who Is Eligible: Open to all independent game developers in the Pan-Pacific Area (see specific rules)
Submissions Due: September 15th, 2010 at 11:59pm GMT+8

The 2010 IGF Main Competition will give out FIVE major awards:

Best Game (RMB 20,000)
Mobile Best Game (RMB 10,000)
Excellence In Audio (RMB 5,000)
Excellence In Technology (RMB 5,000)
Excellence In Visual Arts (RMB 5,000)

There are eight (8) specifically named finalists in total of which the winners will be selected. All finalists will be given three (3) complimentary VIP Passes, six (6) complimentary Expo Passes, an invitation to the IGF awards ceremony at GDC China 2010, and the opportunity to showcase their game on the IGF China Pavilion at the show. In addition to the cash and certificate awards, all winners will be offered two (2) complimentary All Access Passes to GDC 2011 in San Francisco.

IGF Student Competition

Who Is Eligible: Open to all student game developers in the Pan-Pacific Area (see student-specific rules)
Submissions Due: September 15th, 2010 at 11:59pm GMT+8

The IGF Student Competition is the premiere competition highlighting the top student-created indie games and will give out the awards as follows:

IGF Best Student Game (RMB 10,000, 1 Winner)
IGF Excellent Student Winner (RMB 3,000, 2 Winners)

There are six (6) specifically named finalists in total of which the winners will be selected. All finalists will be given two (2) complimentary VIP Passes, 6 (6) complimentary Expo Passes, an invitation to the IGF awards ceremony at GDC China 2010, and an opportunity to showcase their game on the IGF China Pavilion at the show. Besides the cash and certificate awards, all winners will be offered an opportunity for recommendation to top-level international and domestic game companies.

Note: Individual income tax of the cash prize will be withheld and remitted by "IGF China 2010 Committee".

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Key Dates

Here are specific submission deadlines for the 2010 event:

July 5, 2010	Submissions are Open
September 15, 2010	Submission Deadline
October 25, 2010	Finalists Announced
December 5-7, 2010	Game Developers Conference™ China 2010
December 5, 2010	Independent Games Summit @ GDC China
December 5, 2010	IGF China Awards Ceremony (Winners Announced!)
December 5-6, 2010	IGF China Pavilion @ GDC China

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IGF China Jury

Jury Chairman

Simon Carless
Chairman Emeritus (Independent Games Festival) and Global Brand Director (Game Developer Conferences, Game Developer Magazine & Gamasutra.com)

Simon Carless is the Chairman Emeritus of the Independent Games Festival and Global Brand Director of the UBM Techweb Game Network, overseeing the GDC shows worldwide, Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com. He has previously worked as a writer/editor for tech site Slashdot, and as a game designer for companies such as Eidos Interactive and Atari.

Jury Members

Kevin Li
CEO, TipCat Interactive

Mr. Kevin Li is the CEO of TipCat Interactive, which is a new social media company focusing on social game and mobile game development. Before, Kevin Li was the Exec. Director of ACTIVISION China and be in charge of the strategy growth in East Asia. Kevin joined UWINK (NASDAQ: UWNK), a Nolan Bushnell’s game company for video game production after turned back from L.A. in 2000. In 2003, Kevin founded Studios Qin, focusing on the production of MMOG and Console Online games. Studios Qin raised $4m VC in 2005 and was acquired by Vivendi Games in 2006. Kevin was named as the MD of the new born Sierra Online Shanghai. In 2008, after the M&A of Vivendi Games and Activision, Kevin was named Strategy Growth Director, Greater China of ACTIVISION.

Mr. Kevin Li is a 9 years veteran of online game & video game production. Kevin used to help uWink to ship over 30 video games, and volumes of XBOX360 Live Arcade and PlayStation 3 Network games including Arcadian Warriors, Carcassonne, Lost City, Mini Golf Adventure, Gin Rummy, Cribbage and PC MMOG - Creature Hunter Online.

Monte Singman
Main Coordinator, IGDA Shanghai Chapter

* Founder/CEO of Radiance Digital Entertainment, the Shanghai based game studio focuses on production of high quality online game titles.

* Chief Professor at Shanghai Theatre Academy heading up digital entertainment school.

* Founder/CEO of Zona, Inc, founded in 2000, Zona was acquired by Shanda Entertainment (NASDAQ:SNDA) in 2003 prior to Shanda's IPO, later Monte headed up Shanda's 300-400 staff R&D department. Monte departed from Shanda in June/2005.

* Monte is a 22 year veteran in US video game industry, participated in the production of John Madden Football, Test Drive Off Road series, Street Fighter series, Looney Tunes Racing, Hello Kitty Cubi-land and other titles.

Xubo Yang
Director of Digital Art Lab and Assistant Professor, Shanghai Jiaotong University’s School of Software

Dr. Xubo Yang is an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is now in charge of the Digital Art Lab at School of Software and the digital media educational program. In 1998, he received a Ph.D degree in computer science at the State Key Lab of CAD & CG in Zhejiang University. From 1998 to 2001 he was a research scientist in the Virtual Environment group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication (IMK) in Germany. From 2001 to 2003 Xubo worked as a senior researcher at the Mixed Reality Lab of National University of Singapore. His research interests focus on next-generation media art computing technologies in the context of computer graphics, computer vision, real-time rendering, augmented reality, virtual reality and novel media interaction. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in the field of virtual and augmented reality, computer graphics, human computer interaction and entertainment computing. He is member of IEEE and ACM.

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IGF China 2009 Winners

Check out the winners from last year's competition:

Best Game
Captain Forever - Farbs (Australia)

Excellence In Art Direction
DONOVO - Magic Day Studio (China)

Technical Excellence
HurricaneX2 - You Yun Tech (China)

Excellence In Audio
Armor Valley - Protégé Production (Singapore)

IGF Best Student Game
Autumn Dynasty: Paper Generals - National University of Singapore students (Singapore)

IGF Excellent Student Winner
INK - Singapore Polytechnic students (Singapore)

IGF Excellent Student Winner
Bumper Halloween - Beijing University students (China)

Voices from IGF China 2009 Winners

The Best Student Game Winner of the Student Competition
Autumn Dynasty Travis Ho from National University of Singapore (Singapore)

"Being able to attend the IGF and receive an award was a huge honor, but meeting all the other passionate and talented student and indie developers in the region was priceless! In just three days, I gained an appreciation for the cultural diversity behind gamers and game developers in the region: I met many people, learned much, and made great friends-- one day, we might collaborate across countries to make games together!"

The Technical Excellence Winner of the Main Competition
You Yun Tech (China)

"It is our great pleasure to be awarded as Technical Excellence on the 1st IGF China, and it was very nice to participate this event as we met many passionate and talented independent developers from other Asian countries to share the interesting experiences of developing games. In addition, we do draw the attention from some top publishers and are still negotiating with them about publishing the game worldwide."

The Best Game Winner of the Main Competition
Jarrad Woods from Farbs Farbs Farbs (Australia)

"GDC China was great! Through the Independent Games Festival I raised awareness of my game in both eastern and western media. Exhibiting in the expo helped me make contact with major publishers and distributors, and winning an award validated my game in the eyes of players."

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About the Independent Games Festival

UBM TechWeb, a division of United Business Media (UBM), established the Independent Games Festival (IGF) in 1998. After being held successfully for 11 years along with GDC San Francisco, IGF will be brought to Shanghai, China the first time in 2009, to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, especially in the Pan-Pacific area. The awards will not only display to the public at the official website and the conference site of GDC China, but also share with over 18,000 attendees worldwide in GDC San Francisco, to obtain more opportunities on communication and cooperation. The flagship products of UBM TechWeb also include Game Developers Conference^® (GDC), Game Developer magazine, "Webby Awards" winner Gamasutra.com, etc.

Success Stories

Since the Independent Games Festival & Summit started, there have been multiple major IGF prizewinners that have gone on to much larger exposure, garnering increased distribution, a bigger profile, and getting lots more gamers playing their art. Here are some of the highlights:

2009

*The Behemoth's follow-up to Alien Hominid, the IGF-winning Castle Crashers, tops XBLA charts to critical acclaim.

*IGF multi-award winner World of Goo launches as one of the best-selling, best-reviewed WiiWare titles of all time, alongside a popular PC version.

*Petri Purho's Crayon Physics Deluxe spawns an iPhone version courtesy of Hudson, plus a popular PC downloadable version.

2008

*The team behind IGF Student Showcase finalist Narbacular Drop is hired by Valve. The game is reworked into Portal and goes on to win the coveted Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" award for 2008, as well as numerous games of the year accolades.

*Design Innovation winner Braid is slated for an early 2008 release on Microsoft's XBLA service.

*Excellence in Audio winner Audiosurf launches on Valve's Steam distribution service and goes on to become the highest selling game of February, outselling even Valve's own Orange box (including Team Fortress 2 and Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" winner Portal.)

2007

*Design Innovation winner Everyday Shooter is signed by Sony for distribution on the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network, after Sony's John Hight plays the game at the IGF Pavilion during GDC 2007.

*Everyday Shooter's Jon Mak also appears at the inaugural Independent Games Summit.

2005

*Multi award-winner Alien Hominid receives publishing deals in the U.S. (via O3 Publishing) and Europe(via Zoo Digital), much critical acclaim, and even spawns a mobile version.

*Fan favorite N wins the audience award. N+ is currently announced as in development for Xbox 360 Live Arcade, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP.

2004

*Innovative casual strategy game Oasis wins the web/downloadable grand prize, going on to launch on major online portals the following year.

2003

*Super X Studios' Wild Earth, a photographic game based around a worldwide safari, takes multiple prizes and subsequently becomes a motion simulator ride.

2000

*Tread Marks, created by the late Seumas McNally, which the IGF's grand prize is now named after, wins 3 major awards.

1999

*Vicarious Visions, now a major handheld / console developer, honored for Terminus.

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