Winners of Game Developer's Competition - plus a Special Opportunity

The Game Developer's Competition ended yesterday and the results have been compiled. Congratulations to the winners -

1st place: Xylor Baysklef (team leader), Huns Valen, Hiro Yamamoto, and Ananda Sandgrain for Games Parlour: Multiple board games in a pleasant games room setting. The award includes the use of 8 acres of land by the team for a year and US$500 for each team member.

2nd place: Team leader Bonecrusher Slate and Roman Kothari for Route 66 Demolition Derby, the interactive car racing and demolition derby game. This prize includes US$100 per team member and the use of 5 acres of land by the team for a year.

3rd place: Tiger Crossing (team leader), and Cuddles Crossing, Arito Cotton, and Michi Lumin for Deus Via, a mystical Roman-themed synchronous strategy game involving the building of pathways in 3D. Each team member gets US$50 and the team can use of 3 acres of land for a year.

All the winning team members also receive a complimentary 1-year subscription to Second Life.

And more awards coming up -

So far these winners were selected based on the amount of dwell received by each over the past month. Now, these three teams and the fourth place team - Mysterious Journey- will be judged by successful game designer Harvey Smith. Until recently, Harvey was at Ion Storm where he was lead designer on the award winning Deus Ex and project director of Deus Ex: Invisible War. Harvey will review each game next week, evaluating design choices and game play. Based on his evaluations, which he'll share with the teams, he'll choose the final 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winning teams who will split L$25,000, L$15,000 and L$10,000 respectively.

Thank you to all the teams for creating excellent games.

Harvey Smith has completed his evaluation of the four games that got the most dwell in the first part of the contest.

Check here for the press release.

Here are selected notes from his review:


Summary
Second Life is an interesting virtual community centered on the social and creative pursuits of the players. Users express themselves and entertain other members of the community with an amazing array of vehicles, homes, land areas and interactive objects. The environment is innovative in that it is not a traditional MMO, with monsters, character classes and is not a “level treadmill.”

Recently, the Second Life management held a contest for user-created game content then asked me to rank the four finalists. In the early 90's, I played in an online text MUSH where players were allowed to create content in a virtual community. We used to dream of more powerful, visual tools that would fuel the online culture of creativity.

Second Life is all about empowering the members of the community with tools that allow them to re-shape themselves and their worlds. I've been really impressed by what some of the contestants have done with the virtual environment in Second Life. The game designers, artists and coders participating in the contest have come up with games that are combinations of game mechanics and settings that are both classic and innovative.

Ranking
Deus Via (1st)
Route 66 Demolition Derby (2nd)
Game Parlour - Chess/Mah Jong (3rd)
Mysterious Journey (4th)

Notes

Deus Via (1st)

The game uses, as its fictional context, a great concept--chariot races. (Along with the board game feel, immediately made me think of Ben Hurt by CheapAss Games. Deus Via has a great 'arena' feeling.

Though the rules were initially a little complex, I thought the game mechanics were very innovative.

The game features a really nice tension: You’re often one step away from your goal, yet unable to move forward toward it unless you can come up with a clever solution.

The HUD interface was mostly interesting and useful. I had trouble finding the yellow dots representing essence, and I struggled to understand the order in which elemental icons were added to the vertical column (top to bottom or bottom to top).

All told, Deus Via is unique among games and is lots of fun. It has a really nice feel, and this is the Second Life game I returned to play, in my spare time.

Route 66 Demolition Derby (2nd)

This entry features a strongly themed automotive environment with lots of supporting details: autoshop architecture, a flapping racing flag, ‘model’ cars and other atmospheric touches. Clearly, lots of work went into this project.

This project—which is primarily a demolition derby track—also feature two mini-games, making it even more ambitious: A crash-test course and an RC bulldozer maze. The entire project fits nicely into the automotive theme.

The demolition derby and crash-test mini-game were both interesting and fun to play with. The bulldozer mini-game was exceptionally cool: A really good re-creation of a small city. I had a lot of fun with the bulldozer and found it a creative use of the Second Life vehicle control paradigm.

As an aside, regarding the bulldozer mini-game, it's good to see the work of artists and game developers resonating with real world events. For some reason, I was immediately reminded of 9/11, though not in any disrespectful way. (The mini-game implies that certain concepts are percolating through game development, which is cool.)

Game Parlour - (3rd)

This area facilitates the player of two classic games. I enjoyed Mah Jong the most, especially in partner mode, which I found to be satisfying and innovative.

The interface for both games seemed fairly intuitive, which is great, and the play area was pleasant, with good art direction.

Both games were very complete. For instance, the game pieces in chess came with little labels. I thought shrinking the killed chess pieces was a clever bit of coding. Also, the scoreboards were well done, useful and involving solid multi-user concepts. One board cleared weekly and one was persistent.

These games were very good within the context of Second Life itself: No physics problems, good for chatting and catering to Second Life world vibe: people with massive power over the environment, creating and destroying land elements. Clearly, this entry involved lots of thought given to ease of play and catering to the market: Second Life people. Also, consideration had been given to the fact that Mah Jong does well in other online markets.

Mysterious Journey (4th)

This game area deserves a special mention for doing something I love: trying to create a specific environment in which players feel intrigued with the space itself. I loved the ‘playing field’ for Mysterious Journey. The design was very 'mythic' in a sense, centered around 'The Mountain' as an environment. It’s an innovative concept within a virtual community, taking people on an amusement park-like ride.

I thought the floating marbles were a really nice scoring feature that matched the vibe of the game. I also loved the fishtank setting; the feeling of ‘exploring’ a special, exotic place is what Mysterious Journey does well.

The Easter egg credits idea was great—something for advanced players.

Overall Mysterious Journey featured a fun combination of things to do in a really interesting atmosphere