Independent Games Festival
The Independent Games Festival ( IGF) has been held since 1999 every year at the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. It honors innovative games that were developed by independent games developers or students. The IGF was founded in 1998 to encourage innovation in the video game industry, inspired by similar successes at the Sundance Film Festival in terms of independent film productions. An example in which this intention was rising, the game De Blob, which was presented in 2007 as a student project at the Festival and subsequently by THQ for Nintendo DS and Wii was announced.
The Awards, which will be followed by online media. The australian center for the moving image ( ACMI ) is repeated an exhibition with the participants of past festivals.
Subdivision
The festival is divided in several competitions.
- The IGF Competition is the main competition, participate in the games from independent software companies. The jury will award points for each game in different disciplines. In addition, visitors to the festival site have the opportunity to see demonstrations of the participating games and choose their favorites for the audience award. Play the first five participants in a category (or the first three games in the category Best web browser game ) will be valued as finalists for a second time by a larger jury to choose a winner in each category; the audience prize will be determined by visitors to the Game Developers Conference from among the Finalists.
- For the IGF Student Showcase ( to German: IGF Student Showcase ) awarded by the members of a jury for developed by students or student games points. The 12 highest rated games will be exhibited during the festival as a finalist for the " Best Student Game " award. The winner of the grand prize is the game with the most points in the Finalistenkür, but is only revealed during the conference. This category was introduced in 2003, the additional award for the leading participants was first awarded in 2007.
- 2006 and 2007 there was a third competition in which mods were for evaluation. 2006, there were four categories for four popular games available: Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Nights and Doom 3, 2007, the games were divided according to their genre: single player FPS Mod, Multiplayer FPS Mod, RPG Mod and others. A prize for the best game was similar for student games, forgiven. 2008 to run again with full fledged games in the IGF Comptetition mods; the reduced amount of work is intended to be received by the jury in the assessment.
Since 2004, browser games are excellent in the main competition. In the years 2004 and 2005 while the competition categories were divided into two groups: Browser games with a Dowloadgröße of less than 15 MB were given their own division, in which the grand prize and the individual prizes were awarded a second time. 2006, this division was abolished and introduced a single category for browser games.
Prices
In the main competition IGF Competition, the following prizes will be awarded: First prize is the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, which was endowed with $ 20,000 in 2007. Seumas McNally is the name of the first IGF- prize winner; he died shortly after the award. The individual categories in which each 2007 prize money of $ 2,500 were awarded, are: technical perfection, Innovative Graphics, Innovative Sound, Innovative Game Design, Best Browser Game, and the Audience Award. In addition to the cash prize finalists and winners will receive 1-2 tickets to the Game Developers Conference and the permission to promote your game for a year with the award obtained. The winners of the "Student Showcase" Award received $ 500, the price Best Student Game was endowed with $ 2,500. The overall winner of the Mod Competition received $ 5,000.
IGF Competition Winners
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ( $ 20,000 )
Web - based games:
Technical perfection ( $ 2.500 )
Web - based games:
Innovative Graphics ( $ 2.500 )
Web - based games:
Innovative Sound ( $ 2.500 )
Web - based games:
Nuovo Award ( $ 2.500 )
Innovative design ( $ 2.500 )
Web - based games:
Best Browser Game ( $ 2.500 )
Audience Award ( $ 2.500 )
Web - based games: