The Defold GDC Competition 2017!

[Axel]

Hi all—exciting news! Today we are announcing the Defold GDC Competition 2017 (woo!)

Ooh, interesting – tell me more!
In short—make a game with Defold, submit it to the competition before the competition closes at January 22 2017, and cross your fingers. Six teams (three people per team) will win the grand prize of travel to and accommodation in San Francisco, expo passes to the Game Developers Conference 2017, and an exclusive booth dedicated to your game—along with the other winning games—where you get to showcase it to 27,000 people!

What are you looking for?
While there are no clearly defined categories by which your submission will be judged, what we are looking for is a reasonably polished playable which should be fun and/or interesting for most users. Or in other words—we prefer seeing something very small that is awesome rather than a full game that is mediocre.

Awesome, let’s do this! How do I submit my game?
Submissions will be opening soon, but don’t let that stop you. Start building today!

Enough with the talk – where can I read more?
At the competition website!

Alright, I have a few questions – where can I ask them?
We’d love to hear from you. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the FAQ or the competition rules, post them in this thread! Chances are other people are wondering the same thing.

Best,
/Axel

[britzl]

Yeah! I’m really looking forward to playing all the awesome submissions.

[Axel]

Good news—submissions are now open! To submit your game, simply log in to your Defold dashboard, and take it from there. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions whatsoever

[Axel]

Hey all! With just under seven weeks before the competition, I present to you the first out of three judges: Sabrina Carmona. She is an incredibly experienced game producer with experience from Square Enix, Behaviour Interactive, Goodgame Studios, and is currently working at King! Furthermore, she is a Latin American mobile market researcher and speaker.

How are you?
– Great! Looking forward for the submissions!

What will you look for in the submissions?
– I would love to see something innovative, or at least creatively adapted. I would love to see fun in it’s simplest way.

What made you get into the gaming industry?
– I love playing video games. I was always driven to work with something creative and I found the opportunity of uniting creativity, games and people. Working as a Producer is dealing with extremely creative and talented people to build something fun and creative using technology.

What’s your guilty pleasure game?
– FIFA. I am from Brazil, and I love playing FIFA.

Do you have any words of advice to people who are thinking about joining the competition?
– Try to think of the goals that they want to achieve with the project. Is it commercial? Is it artistic? Is it innovation? And then based on that goal, build your project. Take into consideration platforms and innovate using technology, do not let it limit you. Use it in your favour to discover other ways of creating.

[Axel]

Hi all – hope you’re all fine during the holidays or whatever all’y’all are doing. It’s heating up! Only four weeks to go before the deadline. Here’s the second of three jury members that will judge your submissions.

drumroll…

Eli Hodapp is Editor in Chief of TouchArcade.com, the largest iOS-specific games site on the internet. He’s been covering mobile gaming for nearly a decade now, and has loved every minute of it.

How are you?
– I’m COLD! We were having a super mild winter here in Chicago and then suddenly someone flipped the switch back to the brutal winters we’re used to. For me, this just means a day of playing video games, which I’m A-OK with.

What will you look for in the submissions?
– Any time I judge an event like this I’m always looking for what feels like the most unique and innovative game concepts.

What made you get into the gaming industry?
– My backstory is… fairly non-traditional. I had a successful career in medical technology and just really didn’t enjoy what I was doing. I quit my job to look for something new, which coincided with the launch of the App Store, and at the time very few people were reviewing mobile games so I just started doing it for fun while I looked for other job opportunities… Then iPhone gaming exploded, TouchArcade grew alongside it, and the rest is history.

What’s your guilty pleasure game?
– While my days are 100% filled with mobile gaming, my evenings often include many games of League of Legends. I really like how I can get what feels like a totally complete gameplay experience in 20—45’ish minutes.

Do you have any words of advice to people who are thinking about joining the competition?
– To borrow a phrase from The Magic School Bus series of kids’ books and TV shows, “Take chances! Make mistakes!”

[Axel]

You know what time it is? Apart from “panic-fixing-stress-deadline-coming-up-shit-chug-that-coffee” time?
It’s jury time!

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Jamil Moledina

@jmoledina

Games portfolio management for Google Play and Daydream. Writer: Tearing the Sky (novel), Tank Nation (game), Android Developers Blog.

How are you?
– I’m doing well, thank you! Games on Play had a big 2016, we brought some great indies to our audience, and we launched Daydream with some fun, engaging games. I also love writing, and am back in the saddle with a nearly complete screenplay. So all in all, I’m grateful for where I am and optimistic about what’s next.

What will you look for in the submissions?
– Innovation and fun. Developers take a risk when they present something original to audiences. It’s important for the whole marketplace if we can make sure that innovation gets a spotlight, so it has a chance to flourish. That innovation must also actually be fun, so that we really engage with it, and the games have a chance to originate a new genre for future games.

What made you get into the gaming industry?
– I’ve always loved video games, they’re a big part of my childhood, and play with friends. Great movies can transport you to amazing worlds from someone’s imagination for two hours, but games let you be the main character in a expertly created world, and spend as much time as you want there. I love games, and am happy to give back to games where I can.

What’s your guilty pleasure game?
– Sky Force Reloaded. It’s the perfect shmup. It’s classic play polished to today’s visual standards, blended with a modern RPG skill-tree, and deep replayability. Infinite Dreams released it late last year, and has been supporting it with updates ever since. The game just exudes love for games and shmups in particular, I can’t help but love it back. The guilty part is that I use a stylus for an extra 10% of input fidelity in this bullet ballet.

Do you have any words of advice to people who are thinking about joining the competition?
– Competitions are one of the best ways to build buzz around your game, since they’re driven by how amazing the game actually is. Don’t second-guess yourself, just enter your game!

[Axel]

Hi all! I know a lot of you are probably are quite nervous right now, but I just wanted to share the news that another great industry insider will be rating the games—Glen Fox, editor at PocketGamer.

Glen Fox

@foxy_glen

Editor at Pocket Gamer, providing reviews, previews, news, features, opinion pieces, and hands-on videos for Pocket Gamer and AppSpy—and Bath-based writer who has an unhealthy obsession with video games.

Who are you?
– I’m Glen, Editor of Pocket Gamer - the world’s leading mobile and handheld consumer site.

What will you look for in the submissions?
– I’ll be looking for innovation mostly - fresh new experiences, or interesting spins on popular genres. Having said that, a game can completely win me over if it’s so fun that I can’t help but play it.

What made you get into the gaming industry?
– An obsessive passion for games that I’ve fostered since picking up a PS1 controller for the first time. I eventually discovered Nintendo thanks to the advert for Super Mario Sunshine, and picked up a copy of NGC. It was then I realised that I wanted to be a games journalist, so stopped at nothing until I made it so. The rest, as they say, is history.

What’s your guilty pleasure game?
– I’ve got two - FIFA and Call of Duty. Sure, the changes made between each release are barely recognisable, but the franchises never fail to be fun. You could argue that I’m just addicted at this point though.

Do you have any words of advice to people who are thinking about joining the competition?
– This is kind of a recap of what I said earlier, but either innovate with a fresh idea or take, or polish your game up to a fine sheen. Gamers are accepting of games that riff on ideas they’ve seen if it’s fun to play and well-polished.

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And finally; as soon as we have the results, we will start contacting all the participants. Stay tuned, and all of you—give yourselves a great pat on the back for having created something great.