Posts tagged with “igf”

Last year CEO and creator of ByteJacker, Anthony Carboni, hosted the Independent Games Festival. As you know Fire Hose Games is excited to be part of the record breaking number of entries in the 2011 IGF.

Anthony was able to give us a bit of his time and tell us about his experience as a host and as a gamer at last year’s festival.

You were able to host the 2011 IGF awards, what was that experience like?
Awesome. Amazing. Unbelievably great. It was so wonderful to not just meet the people whose games I’d been talking about for years, but also to have some small part in recognizing and celebrating their work.

Why do you think the IGF awards are important to indie game developers?
Well, in a practical sense, there are a cash awards and obviously a lot more visibility. There are fewer marketing opportunities and a lot less money available for indies to get their name out there – something like the IGF awards can really help with that. On another level, one that I think is just as important, after a hugely grueling project, it’s nice to get the recognition and respect of your peers. Plus you can totally meet Tim Schafer there.

What do gamers get out of the IGF awards?
It’s hard to get into indie games – that’s why I started Bytejacker.[Bytejacker is a review show that only reviews games that are available for download only. It often features Indie titles] Having the IGF awards is a highly visible and accessible way for gamers to see what’s out there and get that sort of gateway into what is essentially another entire gaming industry, with just as many choices as the mainstream one they’re used to.

How is the IGF unique from the GDC?
Indies give you less swag but more high fives when they see you.

What are you looking forward to for this year’s IGF awards?
The whole experience was a whirlwind for me last year – it was my first GDC, my first IGF, I had a show to shoot while I was there and a whole other one to host. This year I’m just looking to go and take it slower and have some more fun.

What do you think about Go Home Dinosaurs?
Looks good! Tower Defense can be a crowded place to make your mark, but if I learned anything from Slam Bolt Scrappers, it’s that you guys can weave genres together in some very unexpected ways.

You can read more from Anthony on his site.

The Independent Games Festival is the longest running and largest independent games festival in the world; and Fire Hose Games just helped to break an IGF record.

The 14th Annual IGF is boasting a record breaking 568 entries into this year’s main Indie Game competition, and of course you know that Go Home Dinosaurs is one of them.

The IGF is like The Sundance Film Festival, but for games. It is held in conjunction with the Games Developers Conference where an Independent Games Festival pavilion is set up to show off the competition finalists.

What does the IGF mean for Fire Hose? It gives us and other indie game developers a chance to give our games a nice spotlight. It also allows us a chance to look at what some other indie studios are up to.

Speaking of other indie studios (slick transition right?) Outer Space Studios caught our tweet about IGF the other day and blogged about it on The News from Outer Space . ^_^

(You are following @firehosegames aren’t you?)

You can check our IGF entry out about half way down the page here!

The 2010 IGF Finalists have been announced! Sadly, Slam Bolt Scrappers was not among the finalists, but there’s always next year (when we’ll be further along with development, and with any luck will have finished the game). There is good news though! Boston had a strong showing, and three of the finalists are made by locals!

Club Rochiro made AAAAAAAAAAA, the awesome base jumping game in which you get to flip off protesters, kiss buildings, and listen to Ichiro’s sweet, soothing voice while you meditate. Marc Ten Bosch made Miegakure, a mind blowing 4-D (yes, 4-D) puzzle platformer in which you navigate a Zen Garden and try to keep your brain from exploding. It’s a lot of fun! Finally, Rob Jagnow made Cogs, a fun sliding puzzle game with an awesome steampunk style. Yeah, Rob lives in San Francisco and made the game out there, but screw that, he’s an MIT guy and was making games in Boston until recently, I’m claiming this one for our side.

Congrats to all the finalists, these games are all really spectacular! We’ll give next years contestants more of a run for their money

We’d like to introduce you to Slam Bolt Scrappers!!

What is Slam Bolt Scrappers, you ask? Why, only the awesomest game you’ll ever play! It’s a smart brawler, full of frantic beat ‘em up action with an engaging puzzle element. It’s what we’ve been hard at work developing over the past few months, and what we recently entered into the IGF and the Indie Game Challenge.

Check out www.slamboltscrappers.com for more information on the game and some awesome concept art.

Keep checking back for juicy tidbits of development as we chug along.

We’re still in crunch hell so no real post today, other than a few tantalizing tidbits of what’s to come in the following weeks:

• Unveiling of our game’s title! I promise it will contain the word “badger” at least 15 times.
• A video showing how we roll here at Fire Hose.
• The first images, teasers, and art from our game.
• Beer. Lots of it.
• Some sweet Halloween costumes.

Wish us luck! Friday is when we pull the trigger on submitting to IGF and the Indie Game Challenge.