Indie Games Festival Competition On Pandoras


Tenuki

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I'm sure some of you know about Indie Games Festival (http://www.igf.com). Passionate teams submit their creations for open competition, small monetary rewards and most importantly - public acknowledgment of their skills. This can rocket-jump their carrier in games development industry. To me their "independent" theme is quite inline with Pandora console.

My idea is this: maybe it would be worth to openly promote a possibility to participate in next IGF event by developing a unique game(s) on Pandora console!
Good points:
* For Pandora console: A lot of indie developers, publishers, press would learn about Pandora consoles.
* For players: Several (guessing here) games developed possibly exclusively for Pandora. Rare opportunity to get quality possibly for free!
* For developers: Fame, Glory, Money and Women... (yes, I'm a bit exaggerating here, but you get the point)

Bad points:
* Judging by this years competition next deadline would be 2010 November 1[sup]st[/sup]. This is quite reasonable, but having in mind we don't have Pandoras in our hands - it's a bit worrying.
* According to the rules, judges need 10 units of hardware to test-play the games (http://www.igf.com/rules.html). I quote "[...]along with ten (10) sets of any special equipment and hardware, (e.g., graphics cards, 3D glasses, etc.) necessary to play the Entered Game[...]". I doubt any developer could do that alone. So I guess support from Pandora creators would be necessary here. (I'm not sure here, but I would assume that IGF judges would return those 10 units after the event. Yet they could be contacted directly regarding that)

My questions are following:
1. Do you like this idea? Maybe it has some flaws I missed?
2. If you are a games developer - would you seriously consider to participate?
 
I have entered with 'Mystery Marines':

http://www.igfmobile.com/php-bin/entry2010.php?id=693

There are some videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/mysterymarines

And various other bits of information at the homepage/twitter.

It isn't a Pandora entry, but all projects that I work on I am aiming to also bring to Pandora, one way or another!

Steve
 
Rockthesmurf said:
I have entered with 'Mystery Marines':

http://www.igfmobile.com/php-bin/entry2010.php?id=693

There are some videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/mysterymarines

And various other bits of information at the homepage/twitter.

It isn't a Pandora entry, but all projects that I work on I am aiming to also bring to Pandora, one way or another!

Steve
Looks like your game could be fun, love the cat btw. I wish you luck in the competition. It would be great if you can sort it for the Pandora aswell :D
 
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I didn't enter this for this year, I'm working on a game for GAMMA IV which is going to be at the same place as well as some of the IGF parties (so I've heard). My game is will be updated and optimized for the pandora as soon as I can get my logic driven head around it and have a 'dora in hand.
Nice game Rockthesmurf!

forgot to ask, are there anyone else entering for either? Be cool to meets some fellow 32xer's in March. Shots on me ;).
 
WoW Rockthesmurf, you already participating!? That's very nice. I did not expected this. Would you like to participate next year using Pandora? :)

Everyone. Do you think internal competition would be better in comparison to IGF? I'm a bit unsure about my idea. I totally like it, but I'm a bit confused with so few (although generally - positive) replies.
 
Tenuki said:
WoW Rockthesmurf, you already participating!? That's very nice. I did not expected this. Would you like to participate next year using Pandora? :)

Everyone. Do you think internal competition would be better in comparison to IGF? I'm a bit unsure about my idea. I totally like it, but I'm a bit confused with so few (although generally - positive) replies.
I think it's a great idea, but unless we have a large number of entries, sending 10 Pandoras may not be practical. I know that I'm probably not going to have anything of decent quality to enter by November.
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the games have to run on PCs? IIRC the added hardware must still use a PC. It might have changed though (or I may recall incorrectly) since I haven't read the rules for years.
 
This is my personal rant about promoting Pandora on Open Source competitions, indie game competitions...

OpenPandora Ltd. should be promoted in a very aggresive way if not wants to be just an overpriced gp2x/wiz/dingoo. Don't get me wrong, Pandora is a lot more capable and versatile, but that's just not enough.

Pandora is more expensive, so people will think a lot more about buying it because of that. It must have a quite big number of stuff for it.

I'd say go for any compo and promoting that benefits Pandora. Organize a new one, promote one or whatever you may want.

For example, promoting a Bennu compo for Pandora could be interesting too. See here.

About giving ten Pandoras to the judges: Why not? Maybe they can also become Pandora addicts, it could be a nice way of promoting Pandora and maybe some of the judge members are also game devs too ;)

I also think promoting it on worldwide retro and indie events is a must. This can be organized with local user groups or communities or/and the event itself, depending if being an expo/fair or some kind of public demostration or presentation. Selling some units on those events could be quite interesting too.

OpenPandora Team: Please think very seriously about this or the project will suffer serious problems. Prepare marketing ready to be printed logos, panflets (and find volunteers for translating), etc. An official cool looking t-shirt could be nice too.
 
OpenPandora Ltd. should be promoted in a very aggresive way if not wants to be just an overpriced gp2x/wiz/dingoo. Don't get me wrong, Pandora is a lot more capable and versatile, but that's just not enough.

I don't about the "very aggressive" part but they will have to do some promotion in the future.

I believe that one big danger for the Pandora IMO is not being able to create a large enough user base and not having enough software support. The Pandora has to establish itself has the best homebrew platform with the best support, games, emulators...

Honestly I believe the Pandora has the potential (good hardware, open, support from the community, standard linux distro...). The main issue is availability. Even if we forget the delay until now and the Pandora actually ships in January. Then it's still "only" 4000 units and who knows how long it will take for the second batch.

I really hope they can manage to ship at least 10'000 in year 2010. I would say even 20'000 might be needed to establish a good user base.

The number of early adopter who are ready to buy the product even if it mean pre-ordering is bound to be limited. After the first two batch it should really become easier to order one. (hopefully they will have the production process nailed down by then and the part availability won't be too bad)

That's why I believe the best time to really push the Pandora is when the first two batch have shipped, the early adopter have their device, software is getting better and you can produce a large enough number of Pandora without resorting a pre-order.
 
Tenuki said:
WoW Rockthesmurf, you already participating!? That's very nice. I did not expected this. Would you like to participate next year using Pandora? :)

Well, I have had a Pandora on order since day one, and reckon the games I have worked on work on the Pandora (code wise) without too much difficulty, the bigger problem I have is that I work with a team of 4 (one artist, three coders) and some projects have had an external producer/publisher/artist, as such we have contracts that govern all projects using the engine, so while I will be able to get it running on Pandora, I image we will be looking to sell the final products via the market place thing Craig is setting up. I think I have managed to convince the others that it would be nice to make it very cheap ($2 for instance), and providing [I'm stupid spammer]* a few copies it'll be enough to pay for the artwork to be redone or at least touched up, for 800x480 resolution (at the moment we have always target 480x320). Obviously we can just scale the GFX up in hardware, but at the moment all graphics are drawn 1:1 to the screen, which gets quite a nice, crisp, sharp look to them, which isn't so prevalent when stretched to 800x480.

As for next year, I'm sure we will enter IGF again (we did last year too), and if the judges had Pandora's at their disposal we'd be tempted to target that, as it would be quite a fresh new device, and have that quirk factor about it - which might make it easier to get through to the finals in the US! Plus it would obviously help promote the Pandora (although, as others have said, right now promotion isn't an issue, for everyone Pandora currently scheduled seems to have already been bought, so anyone trying to jump on the wagon now will be in for a long wait, which a lot of 'regular' users might find too long).

Steve

*we make a few sales...
 
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Yep, sounds about right. Good post marshal :)

If the Pandora can prove to be useful in many ways other then gaming (and easy to use) there may be a lot of potential customers out there who will buy one after a demonstration. That is, the early adopters shows it off to people they meet. The Pandora have the potential to be used for hobbies, studies and work, or just a cool PDA/PMP that also plays games well.
 
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