2010 Independent Games Festival Opens Submissions

By: Derek Yu

On: July 8th, 2009

IGF 2010

I’m really looking forward to seeing the giant banners with Dan’s naked torso on them hanging everywhere at next year’s IGF/GDC. Although, why does his face look like Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket meets Rick Moranis? Is there a Photoshop filter for that?

Anyway, submissions are go! The deadline for the Main Competition is November 1st.

Posted in Competitions, Developers, IGF / GDC

Synnah

This is already the sexiest IGF yet!
KC

2009’s was… kinda disappointing, but I’m going to guess (and assume) that was just a fluke.
KC

Whoops, pressed submit to early. Anyways, I’m looking forward to 2010’s, although I’m still vaguely disturbed by the thought of “the giant banners with Danâ€™s naked torso on them hanging everywhere at next yearâ€™s IGF/GDC.”
Snow

Hmm, speaking of sexy, if I don’t get my semi-pornographic game finished to enter into the adult compo, I might be able to do Nov 1. That is if they allow adult themed submissions, I’ll have to read the guidelines/rules.

Also, I hope that mobile phone game makers also enter. That platform will prove to have a huge impact on the gaming scene in the next few years.
bateleur

Yikes, I only have 115 days left to get my sh*t together. That’s alarming.
Krumbs

Data’s body defies logic. It looks thin and frail when he’s wearing a shirt, then the moment he takes it off he’s super muscly.

Also he should wear a bag over his head and work out outisde, so he has a pale face with glasses and a super tanned body rippling with muscles. Man it would be cool to challenge people to fights when your like that.
my gdc

i. g.ive a f.uck
XUE

apparently judge feedback is mandatory now, and there are more judges. pretty nice.
http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

That’s it, I’m quitting my damn job. It takes too much precious time away from BIGJam preparations, The Edult/Aducational Compo and now the IGF.
Martin K

Dan has some terrifying musculature, right there.
cactus

All he lacks is a mustache
Ivy

Is it hot in here or is it just independent games?
splotki

marry me!!!
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

My new start page.
mrfredman

For those making adult games, I just carefully read all the rules. There isn’t anything about certain content being allowed or not. While some judges could find adult content distasteful, it certainly isn’t against the rules.

Adult/edutainment compo entries are go for submission!
http://www.phubans.com phubans

Farbs said about 10 hours later:

My new start page.

===

Bookmarked.
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

nerd with abs… *head explodes*
ShawnF

What they really need to do is to stop allowing judges to self select games. Games that people choose on their own are:

1) more likely to already be well known
2) much more likely to be something you’ll rate highly since you’re deliberately choosing something that caters to your tastes

So what you get is a competition that has a built-in bias against unknown games. doesn’t sound too indie to me. :/

oh, and also not having a minimum play time for judges is pretty silly.

really, just in general the whole thing needs more structure and professionalism. I know some guys that were finalists a few years back, and the only reason they found out was because they checked the website and saw their names in the list. they didn’t even send out an email to let them know they were expected to show up at GDC to show off their game. ridiculous.

I dunno, I really shouldn’t be so bothered since this doesn’t even affect me, but it’s really a shame that the only indie game competition that gets real publicity / has decent prizes is such a mess.
Paul Eres

i agree with ShawnF actually, self-selecting judges would probably be enough to call it rigged if this were any industry other than games
Simon Carless

ShawnF: We don’t actually let judges self-select games. We select games for them in the first round, based on random selection. So what you say just isn’t true.

However, it’s true that a minority of judges will go out of their way to judge other games that are not on their list in the first round. Now we have a lot more judges, we may be in a position to actively bar this. (The voting bit, at least.)

Also, of course we mail people to tell them they are finalists. We’d have trouble getting them to turn up otherwise! (Don’t know how far ‘a few years back’ is, I think I’ve been doing this for 5 or so.)

I’m going to try to not get into the ‘randomly defending IGF against every person on Internet’ again, but I will say that we have a new Content Director (Kris Graft) who is helping me, Matthew and Steve, and his task for 20 hours a week, all year, is to work on the IGF. I’m confident that we are both professional and structured.
Snow

Well these things do take time to iron out. The indie scene is getting bigger and bigger, so in a case where judging might be biased or in the worst case, certain designers are favored, tolerance for that would diminish shortly.

@mrfredman
I’m not sure yet, if I would seriously enter an adult themed/erotic game. It’s still a new frontier for games, too much of either and it’s either, what’s the point of the adult theme, or what’s the point of playing a porno. It would have to be a game so incredibly fun and exciting. The balance is on a knife edge.

If I actually get a game finished for the adult compo, it will be my first and so far only completed game. So, there as well, I dunno if newbie’s have much of a chance against indie giants. Still, it is open to everyone, and I’ve seen other newbie’s release awesome games.
Esquar

my submission for the banner: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/599805/igf_spoof.png
PHeMoX

@snow: I’ve seen a few indie adult/porn games, but most of them never really had a serious chance, even despite the genre. Trust me, a few boobs more in a game certainly is a guarantee for more sales.

Looking at the previous winners of the IGF, I doubt true adult games would fit in, let alone stand a chance of getting any votes at all.
http://josephkingworks.blogspot.com/ Joseph

man boobs
ZombiePixel

Quick – someone submit another Columbine game or something with “Edge” in the title or another “You Have to Burn the Rope”. That lack of controversy around here is killing me.

Although I’m sure “The Path” will be submitted and win an award. That should cause enough people to cry foul.
FISH

im gonna pull a blow and re-enter Fez for controversy.
ShawnF

Simon: From what I understand, how it works is that each judge was given 10 games that they were supposed to review, then they were encouraged to play more games beyond that? However, I also get the impression that there are basically no consequences to ignoring this list and just doing whatever you want?

Actually, here’s a question that should get to the root of this: what was the lowest number of judges a game saw last year and also the highest number? From talking to people who’ve entered, I’d guess the difference is somewhere around 3 vs 15, which is pretty bonkers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think you guys mean well, but I think there are just a lot of easy fixes that would help a lot.
Hoo

How about holding a competition for games that disprove the existence of God? That should get some notice.
God

Hey! I resent your idea!
Simon Carless

Shawn: duly noted, and with many more judges this year, we will be able to even out number of voters per game.

I can’t recall the exact voter number variance, but I’m pretty damn sure it was never as much as that.

Obviously, all of our judges are volunteers so it’s pretty difficult to get exactly even voting numbers for each game, especially with thousands of votes cast, but we do our best.

(That information isn’t actually available to people who have entered or judges, so I think people are guessing or conspiracy-ing.)

Thanks for being a little less combative in your reply.
ShawnF

I guess this is what I don’t understand – it doesn’t seem difficult at all to me. You just have a setup where when a judge wants to get a game for review, they push a little button on a website and it spits out the next game for them to judge. This thing goes down the list and just gives everyone the next game. Judges cannot review any games except the ones they’re fed. Simple, fair, and keeps all the games at as close to even review counts as possible. Take $100 and pay some guy to code it up in a day. :o

Also, I’d really appreciate it if you’d look up the numbers on the variance. I’m EXTREMELY confident that there’s a big swing – I’ve talked to a few entrants, and unless they were lying without motive, there’s definitely a big gap there. At least one of the two of us would learn something from you checking it out, and if I’m wrong then the community can be happy that all is right with the world. :)

Or if that information isn’t available (which is should be, btw – contests with large cash prizes need to be careful to keep a record of voting in case of fraud scandal), I’d suggest tracking it this year and being a little more open with information about the process and how things went. Obviously you don’t need to reveal specific votes, but there’s a real problem with the transparency of your organization. This didn’t matter so much when the IGF was this little thing that no one cared about, but it’s grown enough and is responsible for enough people’s successful careers that you really should start taking it more seriously.
ShawnF

Come to think of it, specificity would be even better. Once the contest is over and it can’t influence other judges, why not show anonymized review scores for every entrant? Unless there’s something messed up going on, how could that hurt? Heck, it could even help build interest in the IGF after the results are announced, drive some post-GDC traffic to the site… people who follow the competition would be able to see how close it was, how this year’s entrants fared vs previous years, etc. It’d also let developers get a better idea of how their game was received relative to their peers, which is always useful.
Simon Carless

As I said, we’re going to try restricting first-round judges to only voting on assigned games this year, even though it will reduce total amount of votes.

We already have a system, as you described, that assigns random games to judges (albeit in one set – this is a lot easier for judges because then they can download all the games they have to judge at once).

I think I’m being pretty transparent here in discussing these specifics in public. I believe the upper limit of first-round simultaneous votes I’ve seen in the past was seven or eight.

Some math I was discussing with the IGF co-organizers earlier:

– 15 games per judge.
– 150 judges.
– 2250 votes (theoretical maximum)
– 1500 votes (actual amount of votes)
– 250 entries
– 6 votes per game.

That’s somewhere around what we are aiming for for the first round.
WNF

So are his abs up there because he’s the only fit independent gamer alive?
Because.
I think that’s what it is.
Very homoerotic, I like it.
ShawnF

That’s a great start, and I’m happy to hear it. Could you explain how the later rounds work? Is this a new system? From what I got before, there was basically just a giant judging round to determine the finalists, then the finalist round which uh… actually, how DOES the finalist round work? I remember the Beezly’s Buzzword’s guy wrote up a thing back when he was a finalist that basically said it was all one guy’s decision, but since they (Flashbang) went on to become involved in the IGF, I assumed that has changed?

Anyway, as nice as these changes are, I can’t help but notice that you ignored pretty much everything I asked about. :/ Could I get at least a “sorry, go screw yourself, I’m not going to take the time to look up old records to satisfy one paranoid dick on the internet”?

In any case, I do really appreciate that you’re making an effort to talk to the community. I’ve been in situations similar to yours where you have internet jackasses yelling for blood because they don’t like some decision you made, and I know how frustrating it can be when you’re doing your best and people still give you shit about it. So thanks for that.
Ob

His abs aren’t obscene, but the new ads displayed on NewGrounds (apparantly in retaliation to adblock) sure are offensive. The last one told me to ‘f-cken die’. I’m no big-city lawyer, but that seems a little too far for advertising, and I sure ain’t going to buy something from the NG store.
ShawnF

Uh, that’s weird. I posted a reply earlier and now it’s gone. Anyway…

This is a great start, and I think it’ll be a huge improvement. Could you explain a little about how the judging rounds work? My understanding from before was that there was just the main round and then the finalist round. Has that changed or am I mistaken about how it used to work?

Also, any chance of getting my questions up above answered?

Anyway, I’m glad you see you listening to the community. I know it sucks to have your every move questioned, but I think it’s important. You guys have the power to make someone’s career, and I think it matters a lot that you do everything you can to make the process as fair and well-run as possible.
Bumblebee Man

Dan’s abs are offensive in the sense that they are grotesquely misshapen compared to the rest of his body (especially his non-existent obliques).

It’s clear that he’s been doing isolation exercises (i.e., crunches or situps) without doing any compound exercises (i.e, bicycle crushes, planks).

It’s just like that episode in the Simpsons, where Homer lifts a barbel with his right hand over and over again for weeks, developing a muscular right arm…but still flabby everywhere else.

That is not something to be idolized.
Ultim8

Wow. It begins huh? I hope I can finish Katakijin by then…no wait…I WILL finish Katakijin by then.
Anthony Flack

You can work on one muscle group at the expense of all the others if you want to – that’s the INDIE SPIRIT, rejecting the conventions of mainstream body building.
Zok

Well said!
RedFlamingPunt

Dan’s abs are offensive in that they are not experimental enough.
undertech

Still, for all that abs to be visible must mean that he’s been eating cleaner than most people who don’t spend 10hrs a day programming and such. (What wait, you mean Dan DOESN’T work 10hrs+ a day on CC?!)
Steve Swink

@Bumblebee Man:

He’s just a freaky Swedish super solider of a man-specimen with the energy of an adolescent golden retriever. He actually doesn’t do any isolation exercises, and only does biking, swimming, hiking, unicycling etc. We should all be so lucky, and so fit :).
Jay

Almost a week between posts!?
Muz

Yes the next post had better be something EPIC.

If not i shall cry.
undertech

cry away, it’ll do you some good.
sandy

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sandy

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