Update: The submission deadline’s been extended to August 20.
This is a good year for inaugural game conferences in Boston. On the heels of No Show comes The Boston Festival of Independent Games, held around Cambridge’s Kendall Square on September 22.
BostonFIG will be a public series of events centering around locally produced games, be they digital, tabletop, or otherwise. Admission is free, though the event’s website does request that you register before showing up.
New England-based game makers have through August 10 — that’s this coming Friday — to submit their own works for inclusion in the festival. Each game submitted will be examined by at least one of the festival’s curators (the list of whom includes Y.T.), who will provide studied feedback to its developer. Submissions that meet BostonFIG’s display criteria become eligible for inclusion into the festival’s showcase.
The game submission fee for the videogame showcase is $15 ($10 for students), and is waived entirely for tabletop and street-game submissions. We’re especially interested in receiving student work, in fact, as well as card games and board games produced around these parts.
BostonFIG’s own copy about the festival submissions process, including relevant URLs and more specific instructions, follows. Hope to see your games!
Co-presented by MIT Game Lab and Boston Indies, the Boston Festival of Indie Games is a debut celebration of independent game development with emphasis on the New England region. Boston Festival of Indie Games seeks to support and showcase the efforts of independent game developers by providing a free public event that encourages attendees to share and interact with games in various forms, both digital and non-digital. The Boston Festival of Indie Games is focused on creating an intersection between community, academic and independent interests in game play. The showcase will include videogames and non-digital games (board games, street games, LARPs), produced in the area of New England.
The Indie Video Games Showcase is an opportunity for independent developers to show off their games, get feedback from the public, and win prizes. Voting will be open to the public in different categories. The submission free of 15$ per digital game; 10$ for submissions from students.
Game creators can also showcase their card games, board games, street games and LAPS to the non-digital games section of the festival. This section is non-competitive, and therefore there is no submission fee for submitting non-digital games. We hope to have prizes for non-digital games in the future.
Submissions will be first screened by Boston FIG volunteers who will make sure that the game meets our criteria. The games will then be reviewed by at least one of our curators, who will provide feedback to the developer. The curators will make the final decision about which games make it into the showcase.
Deadline for submissions is August 10, 2012.
Eligibility
What constitutes “indie” is always difficult to determine, so game makers should be ready to make the case for why their games are suitable for the showcase. These are some of the criteria to identify games that are suitable for the festival:
- Games may be either recently released (within the last 6 months) or in production.
- Games should be independently produced, though publisher funding/distribution is acceptable.
- Games are not produced by a major publisher-owned studio, which is included in this list http://www.theesa.com/about/members.asp
- Games should be produced by studios in the New England area.
- Games should include at least one finished, playable level.
- Game content and other materials are owned solely by the developer/designers or legal permission obtained to use any other copyrighted material.
Game makers should be ready to demo on their own hardware, or be able to send someone who can do it for them, on September 22nd, 2012. If we have hardware available, we will let entrants know asap.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us http://bostonfig.com/contact/
If you have a game, please submit it via our online system http://bostonfig.com/game-submissions/
