The first MassDiGi Game Challenge is now over. Congrats to the finalists and the winners, and thanks to all the people who put it together and the sponsors and mentors who donated time and money, it does mean a lot to the growing game development community here in MA.
All of the entries seemed really unique and innovative. I wasn’t participating with an entry but I did thoroughly enjoy the whole event. I am definitely entering next year with AOS! By then I should have my game play better defined and I will have figured out the pesky things like demographics and marketing. I am still at the experimental stage and really don’t know where I want to go with it yet, but I am thinking about that more than ever. I also enjoyed the 3D Stimulus put on by Great Eastern which had an excellent set of talks and demos.
The game challenge had a whole day of panels Friday on the game industry, pitching games, and what makes a great game. All the panels had very successful folks from the industry and some who also acted as mentors throughout the process. Getting the one on one help is something I am kicking myself for – I should have entered just for that. Seeing the final day was great also. The pitches all went off well even with minor technical difficulties. Everyone seemed to have a very cool idea with a lot of passion behind it.
A crew from RIT where I went to school even won one of the categories! RIT now has an awesome game design school which makes me just cry going through the website. This didn’t exist when I went in the mid 90s, but 3D and virtual reality were it then so everyone was excited about it and we had access to some SGI workstations in the CS department which was quite special for the time. I am pining right now for a youth potion to knock 20 years off my life.
Well, hopefully all this excitement is going to propel me to the completion of my behavior system and the combat that rides on top of it. I have plans to push into the area of destructible items and characters next – I want crates and barrels that fly apart, and exploding zombies and skeletons – flying zombie arms will do secondary crush damage! My final objective is to have some kind of playable prototype scene for the Boston Festival of Indie Games that is being put together by the Boston indies crowd. If you are here in the area definitely signup on the website so you can get more details when they are announced. The event will likely be late this summer.