October 14, 2003
Independent Game Happenings
112 games have been entered in 2004’s Independent Games Festival. Some dozen or so finalists will be chosen by a jury to compete at the Game Developers Conference in March in San Jose. The games’ development times range from 3 days to 8 years. Most seem like smallish web-based games, and I don’t see as many genre-busting works as I’d like, but I’m excited by the ~50% increase in the number of entries from last year.
Also, last weekend was the 2nd annual Independent Games Conference, sponsored by GarageGames. Looking at the schedule, it appears to have been a low-budget version of the expensive Game Developers Conference, with a few independent-games-oriented sessions thrown in the mix.
While we’re on the topic, I’ll throw in a link to the annual Indie Game Jam, whose results get shown at GDC’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop. They say they’ll soon be posting a fresh call for participation for 2004’s event.