Competitions

Let's talk about competitions this week. Entering competitions is a great way for you to become a better game designer. It helps you practice designing within limitations, scheduling and learning how to develop games specific to your client.

First of all, don't be afraid of entering any competition. Some people may get intimidated or think "other people's games are going to be much better than mine. Why should I bother entering at all?" This isn't healthy. Unless you don't have the time, always take every opportunity to enter competitions. Doing so also shows your confidence. One of my good friends once told me that entering competitions shows that "I'm confident enough in my work to brave the slings and arrows of the public in a competition."

When you enter a competition, don't just submit any game that just happens to meet the requirements. Study the competition and ask yourself a few questions like:

1. Who is running the competition?
2. What is the competition for?
3. What are the judges looking for?

Also, take a look at the past winners of the competition you're entering (if any). This will let you know the kind of games the competition favours. If the competition is the type where it does a different theme each time, you can still look at the past winners to see how their games dealt with the theme.

Another great lesson you can learn from entering competitions is learning how to develop a game specific to your client (in this case, the judges of the competitions). This will help you to look at your game from a different perspective. Remember that if you want to be a game designer, you'll be developing games for other people... not yourself.

I once entered a competition called "Games for Netbooks" which was sponsored by Intel. At first, I mistakingly decided to submit a game which I just thought would be great way to show off my design skills. However, I quickly realized that this wasn't the way to go. So, I did research on the competition and fortunately, there was a page explaining what the judges were looking for in the submissions. After that, I developed a new game that met all the criteria and a few months later, I had won first place for "Best Gameplay".

In case you are interested, you can find the article about it here.

Anyway, that's all for this week. I'll put up a few links below to some game competitions. There's a lot more out there so remember to look around. Good luck and all the best. See you next week!

[LINKS]

IndiePubGames
IGF
DreamBuildPlay
IndieGameChallenge
GlobalGameJam

Here is another one thanks to Zace

CompoHub