Darwinia Wins Grand Prize of $20,000 for Best Independent Game
Posted by: Rob Loach at March 24, 2006 9:19:09 AM
San Jose, Calif. - March 23, 2006 - Introversion's retro-stylish PC action-strategy title Darwinia led the pack at the 2006 Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards, taking three prizes, including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game. The winners were announced last night at the 8th Annual IGF Awards ceremony, hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, Calif.
The IGF awards have been described as the Sundance Festival of the video game world, and offer both global exposure and significant cash prizes to the lucky winners. Other winners included groundbreaking time-manipulation platform title Braid, which won for Innovation In Design, as well as cheeky Flash-based beat-em-up Dad 'N Me, which triumphed in the new Best Web Game category.
The first-ever IGF Modding Competition, which is awarding $10,000 in prizes to the best amateur 'modders' for existing video games, also saw outstanding winners, including cyberpunk mod Dystopia for Half-Life 2 and ancient Chinese mod Path Of Vengeance for Unreal Tournament 2004, as well as console-style RPG mod Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 1 for Neverwinter Nights, and the visceral Last Man Standing Co-Op for Doom 3.
"Independent game development is in a very exciting place right now, as digital distribution helps change business models radically", said Simon Carless, chairman, IGF. "We're delighted to help support the innovation and risk-taking that indie developers take to advance their field and help shift gaming paradigms."
The IGF awarded the following games in each category in the main competition - each received a cash prize of $2,500 as well as sponsor-related prizes, apart from the AdultSwim.com Award ($5,000) and the Grand Prize ($20,000):
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Darwinia
Best Web Browser Game
Dad 'N Me
Innovation In Game Design
Braid
Technical Excellence
Darwinia
Innovation In Audio
Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space
Innovation In Visual Art
Darwinia
Audience Award
Dofus
AdultSwim.com Award
Dodge That Anvil
As previously mentioned, the winners of the new IGF Modding Competition were also announced at the IGF awards ceremony last night, and were awarded $2,500 each in the four game categories. The IGF Modding Competition acknowledges the most innovative and original modifications in independent game development, in an effort to recognize the importance modding has carried in PC games.
The IGF recognized the following in the Modding Competition:
Unreal Tournament 2004
Path Of Vengeance
Half-Life 2
Dystopia
NeverWinter Nights
Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 1
Doom 3
Last Man Standing Co-Op
The Audience Award was conducted in association with IGF media sponsors GameSpot and Download.com. It was decided by popular ballot on a special section of the GameSpot site, which allowed gamers to download demos of the Main IGF finalists, and then vote on their favorite.
The IGF was established in 1998 by the CMP Game Group to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, in the way Sundance Film Festival honors the independent film community. With a record-breaking 118 entries from all over the world, the 2006 IGF reflects how global the game development community has become.
The 8th annual Independent Games Festival was sponsored by: AdultSwim.com, Microsoft, Moondance Games, Epic Games, Ageia and Digipen; the premier media sponsors were GameSpot and Download.com.
For more information about the IGF, the finalists and the winners please visit www.igf.com.
About the CMP Game Group (www.cmpgame.com)
A core provider of essential information to the professional game industry, the CMP Game Group offers market-defining content, and drives community through the Game Developers Conference, GDC Europe, the Serious Games Summit D.C., GDC Mobile, GDC Asia, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, the Independent Games Festival, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and GDCTV. For more information, please visit www.cmpgame.com.
About CMP Media (www.cmp.com)
CMP Media is a marketing solutions company serving the technology, healthcare and lifestyles industries. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP Media has earned the confidence of more professionals and enthusiasts in these fields than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in each of these industries in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Media is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.
SnOrfusMember since: 2/28/2006 From: North Bay, Ontario
Posted - 3/25/2006 4:58:05 PM
No doubt that it's a great game, but at what point does a game company stop being 'indie'? They already had a successful title a few years ago (Uplink).
Tesseract_HotplateMember since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA
Posted - 3/25/2006 7:38:21 PM
Yeah, I don't know how much I agree with calling them 'indie' either. They are distributing via Steam. It's not like it's three guys in a garage anymore.
Yea i also dont agree with calling them indie, and giving them $20k give me a break. That money should go towards a group of real garage indies who could use it to fund a title. Clearly the darwinia developers are already in direct contact with valve and are making money (i bet theyve earnt way more from steam sales than other indie devs..), as far as im concerned the money went to the wrong team.
I personally have to disagree with the above comments. The guys
have worked hard on both Uplink and Darwinia and their success
gave them the boost needed to be featured in steam.
If there is anything worth realising, its that being a good indie
developer isnt just about developing, but taking the initiative to
also try promoting your product.
Now that they have the edge both in sales and the extra winning cash,
I would probably say they no longer classify as indie developers.
That I think is the real difference and probably the reason for the
disagreements on whether they deserve the cash or not.
Lets see how far they get. If anything, the cash given is well given
if they can take that and invest it back into funding the next
innovative title.
don't mean to sound the odd one out here... but i found both of these games VERY boring. Give me Max Payne1/2/3?(please yes!), GTA(all of em), The Suffering 1/2, Final Fantasy 1-99 LOL, Resident Evil 1-99 haha, Silent Hill 1-99 hehe, Morrowind, Half-Life 1/2, Doom 3, or Oblivion and simiar type games from an Indie Dev or a few guys working from home and i would be impressed ;-)
It's an achievment for sure, this Darwinia for a few guys to make, but let's not get carried away here please... it's still only on the same ground (in my eyes anyway )as one of those crappy "match 3" type games compared to the ones i posted above. If that's your bag, then fine, i'm happy that these type of games make you feel good, but it isn't my type of game (and probably not a lot of other peoples...i.e not dev's , proper paying people who buy games), if i was given these games for free, i probably couldn't be arsed to finish them, let alone be bothered to buy them.
Sorry, i don't mean to sound so harsh, but dev's tend to get carried away with these type of posts.. that's just my opinion of course :)
If you'd like to discuss what is so marvelous about these games from IntroVersion, that the game titles i posted above don't touch upon, please do...
i'm curious..
Realistically speaking I dont think that you will find indie
developers making anything like Half-Life 2 without a full fledged
team of artists and developers. Looks like the gamer got carried away :)
As a gamer I would agree that Darwinia wouldnt actually be my
kind of game. With that said, I have seen many superb games from
indie developers and most of them actually have been the result
of competitions with great prizes.
I dont need to remind you that some of the older classics such as
Prince of Persia 1 were developed by bed room developers.
In my opinion, an indie developer is someone (or a group/company) that makes their game without external financial assistance. Therefore, they have total control over their product because they have no business obligations. Even now that Introversion has won prize money they are still indie because they are not obligated to turn a profit. They still have exclusive creative control of their games.
Some people are afraid of successful indies, because that is their excuse.
Disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated with Introversion, IGF or a successful game; because I'm indie. ;)
There was one game done by 1 guy (yes just 1 not 2 or three), the whole thing from designing it, to programming it, advertised here on GD.net a while back.
He worked on it full time, and bought models from Turbo Squid or hired a few freelance artists. Damn, i wish i could remember the name of it now, or find the link to it to show you what i think is impressive for an indie.
It was like a Grand-Thef-Auto game, with strategy elements. He had a decent publisher for it too. Now, that game (although it wasn't finished when i saw it) REALLY impressed me... i'll have to dig through the image of the day here to find it, i'm sure it's there somewhere.
Seriously, i could write the type of games most Indies choose to go for, pretty easily i think by myself (you know, the match games, and stuff you get from popcap and that), but i have to feel passionate about a project, else it aint worth me doing it;-) I would rather go for a really ambitious game project, than something that i wouldn't enjoy playing myself.
@ the last poster...
yes, your right about the indie thing...
but a bedroom coder or "LoneWolf"..has a totally different meaning(to me,anyway).
SnOrfusMember since: 2/28/2006 From: North Bay, Ontario
Posted - 3/28/2006 9:15:31 PM
Quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
In my opinion, an indie developer is someone (or a group/company) that makes their game without external financial assistance. Therefore, they have total control over their product because they have no business obligations. Even now that Introversion has won prize money they are still indie because they are not obligated to turn a profit. They still have exclusive creative control of their games.
Some people are afraid of successful indies, because that is their excuse.
Disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated with Introversion, IGF or a successful game; because I'm indie. ;)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you're saying that any company out there that doesn't hold financial debt is 'indie'? I'd have to disagree. That pretty much encompasses any company that isn't publically traded and does not have a publisher/VC.
well, i can't understand why nobody has posted any comments since my last post about the game gang wars that i mentioned.
Just out of curiousity, how many members does the IntroVerson team consist of?
I recently seen a post on the Conitec game studio forums, where there were said to be between 12- 17 people? is this true? if so, don't you find the example i posted above (Gang Wars) more impressive, since 1 guy did it by himself (and IMHO seems a better game) than these games by IntroVersion?
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glenrm
Member since: 8/4/1999 From: Oviedo, FL
Posted - 3/24/2006 10:38:24 AM
Posted - 3/25/2006 4:58:05 PM
Posted - 3/26/2006 6:48:40 PM
