I wanted to drop y’all a line and alert you to a recent bit of OTEE news, namely the fact that Sam I have been busy putting together a game development contest! Yup, it’s that time again, time for you folks to put your heads together and make some amazing content. It’s not all for naught, there are some tasty prizes to be had…
Top DOG Game Development Contest
Without a doubt, it’s an exciting time to be involved in the Unity Community, Unity 2.0 is on its way, the Unite 2007 conference is in October and the community is growing in both size and depth of talent. These are all great reasons to celebrate and we’re celebrating the OTEE way… with a game development contest! We’re looking for the Top DOG, that is the best Developer of Online Games. If you think you’re the Top DOG then prove it by entering our contest, you could walk away with a free copy of Unity 2.0 and $2,000 in cash.
More information, including the official contest rules, can be found on the contest announcement page.
Note: you are free to begin working on a new title or you can submit a game that’s already a work in progress. Our main goal is for folks to submit the best that they have, old, new or otherwise. Show us what you got!
Who here will step it up and claim the title? We’ll monitor this thread as time goes on so if you have any questions please feel free to post those here and Sam I will do our best to answer them. Alternatively you can send any questions you have to contest@unity3d.com as we’re tending to any incoming emails as well.
This is easily the grandest contest that OTEE has ever sponsored. Tom and I have been doing a lot of the detailed planning, but really everyone at OTEE has been able to chime in, and we’ll all be rooting for each entry.
I wanted to go a little more in-depth into the web player theme here too. Some of you may have noticed that there has been a lot of talk about making casual games with Unity lately. Here I’ll mention Tom’s article about getting games published up on casual portals too. A lot of you may not understand quite why we are promoting the web player in this way. The truth is that we want every single one of you to be successful with your game development aspirations. To be successful, you’ll have to make money at some point. Casual games are the best way to start making money from your games.
Now, this does not mean you have to make a game like Bejeweled or something that wouldn’t normally appeal to the “hardcore” gaming crowd. Hardcore gamers play casual games too… just look at Shockwave.com, Kongregate, or Manifesto Games. It would be awesome news to us if any of the contest entries (not just the winners) were able to publish their game on one or more portals.
We want to encourage a lot of creativity with this contest, and that’s one reason we have Web Browser/Network Integration listed as one of the judging criteria. Do something interesting with your web player! Design a unique game that would only be possible on the internet as a delivery platform!
We’re all looking forward to the amazing creativity that is going to come out of this community. So form your teams and start experimenting!
Networking interaction and/or client-server communication (networked game play, high scores, data retrieval, dynamic comments, etc.) are not specifically required, but those sorts of things will earn extra points in scoring (among other things).
Top __D__eveloper of __O__nline __G__ames, aka Top DOG. Canines are optional as are frankfurters, hot dogs or any other food products…
Oh can you hear the collective groans over that? :lol:
But keep in mind that the web browser/network integration aspect can mean a lot of different things. It could be some unique integration with in-page elements, or data retrieval and display (high scores lists, network driven options, etc.) or ???
I don’t see why we wouldn’t share our feedback with each content author, we want folks to create great games with Unity and offering our thoughts and ideas can only help us all achieve that goal.
All criteria will be equally weighted. So if you decide your game would benefit from more effort/time into gameplay, visuals, and audio, then a boosted score in those areas might offset a lower score for the integration category.
I would strongly encourage everyone to make their game “fit” in the web page, at least with some colors, game play info, or other web page aesthetics if you’re not doing anything network technology. Entries that are published in the plain, auto-generated web player html page without any customization are likely to receive a low score in this category.
Why isn’t the timeline to create the game limited to the ~7 weeks ?
Sounds not sooo fair if someone is lucky to be close to beta or already is in beta stage and enters with a nearly finished game… created within months or even years. :shock:
Of course, we are encouraging everyone to create a new unique game for this contest. The whole idea with casual games is to not spend 1-2 years in development. So any team that submits a game like that is sort of missing the whole point.
We won’t discriminate against games that are already in production, but we will be able to tell if the entry was crammed to fit the web player requirement.
Oh man, I’ve been whittling away at the perfect Tic-Tac-Toe MMO for the last couple of years. Are you saying my on-line gaming masterpiece won’t be accepted for this competition? Damn, I guess I’ll have to sit this competition out and ready the world for “Tic-Tac-Toe Dominatrix” at a later date.
Good luck everyone, this competition seems like it’s going to be really fun for those willing to take up the challenge. That’s a lot of dough up for grabs and the criteria for the submissions is way open to interpretation so I bet we’ll see some crazy entries. I have to imagine that Unity 2.0 is going to appear half way through this competition to allow people to integrate some on-line aspects to their entries? Great stuff and I’m really happy to see more competitions like this happening in the future.
I’m in this lucky position, working for my game about 1-2 hours a day over last six months and I understand your position. But if the rules won’t change, I’ll enter this competition.
Hummm… rules don’t even exclude published Unity games, right?
Edit:
We won’t discriminate against games that are already in production
Ok, already answered.
Another thing, I’ll get 2 weeks of vacation and I don’t know if I’ll have time to code so if some student starts now working on a new game for this competition, probably he could work on it more time than me in the last six months…
Yes, the rules do exclude published Unity games. That means Aarku will be disqualified if he submits BBBG published in a web player
But to be serious, the spirit of this contest is really for everyone to think up a new, small, fun game that is really designed for quick-access online play. Those who are trying to make the next Halo and suddenly try to cram their progress into a web player are not necessarily going to have the best chance at winning.
Think about playability and accessibility instead of complexity. Don’t be discouraged from trying to make a in-depth strategy game, but remember that time is short! Again, take a look at the types of games up on shockwave.com or kongregate.com to get an idea of the right kind of scope for this contest.
A small and complete game is going to have a better chance of winning than a large incomplete one.
I can’t find that rule in the contex page, can you add it?
Even before this context I was planning to release a “web edition” of my game with 20 levels that you can’t find in the stand alone version.
Stand alone game and web edition game in this case are seen as different games or not?
If I release the stand alone version after registration but before Unite2007 the web edition will be disqualified?
Edit:
The web edition version will contain online score registration and stand alone version can load/save games but can’t register online score.
The spirit of the contest is to make games that you can turn around and put up on a web game portal. So if a web version is different from a standalone in terms of content, features, or other design elements, it will not be disqualified.
If your standalone game is not already released, then you will be OK if you release it before the contest deadline. We’re trying to avoid games that have already been completed and published like Megapixel, Turret Wars, Tiki Magic Mini Golf, etc. Again, the spirit of the contest is to make a new game that fits in the context of publishing it on web game portals.
Jessy and I have been working on a concept for a game over the past month or so, but nothing has really been done with it yet. We are hoping to enter a sort of light, maybe one level version into this contest with the intention of continuing to work on a full, multi-level version of the same game. We are a bit concerned about the following statement:
OTEE reserves the right to use all submitted entries for marketing and promotional efforts, including use on our website or in printed materials…
and what that might mean if we intend to have the full version of the game published elsewhere at a later date. We wouldn’t personally have a problem with our entry being used in such a capacity, but we don’t have any experience as far as this legal mumbo-jumbo is concerned so we don’t know what sort of trouble, if any, this could cause in the future. We were thinking about just putting a different “skin” on our already extant game concept so that we wouldn’t have any problems with the same characters being used, but we’ve no idea if that’s even necessary.
We’ll monitor this thread as time goes on so if you have any questions please feel free to post those here and Sam I will do our best to answer them. Alternatively you can send any questions you have to contest@unity3d.com as we’re tending to any incoming emails as well.
