Psycho Game Developers To Make YOUR Game?
Speaking of the whole "Game In A Week" thing, some developers who I think are certifiable (but very cool) have taken on a very unusual challenge. From the Black Triangles website:

"The basic idea is that given a well fleshed out GDD (that's game design document) a programmer (or two or ten) are given 40 hours each to do as much of the game as possible. These are not contiguous hours, but 40 working hours ( a full work week ). Whenever they program, they run a timer, when all the programmers have used up all their time they release the game open source to the community.

"This is an exercise for everyone involved. It teaches designers how to scope their ideas, MMO designs are immediately discarded, as are anything with the phrase "Like Oblivion". Programmers are taught time management, how to solve problems quickly, it emulates a microcosm (fancy wordage ftw) of the actual gaming industry. And best of all everyone involved gets the chance to give back to the game development community that has helped them so much this far. It's a great exercise, it's a heckuva lot of fun, and best of all you see results quickly. So what are you waiting for?

"Send your design documents to: 40HourGame (at) BlackTriangles (dot) com"

Now, they don't say how they are gonna open source the resulting game. But if they open up the license so that anybody could take it and see if they can turn it into a commercial project, no (major) strings attached (though I'd consider credit, at the very least, to be obligatory whether or not they demand it), this would be an AWESOME way for an aspiring game developer / game designer / game producer to get a project jump-started. If nothing else, you could see what it takes to get a game idea from concept to playable prototype.

This will no doubt be an eye-opening experience for all involved.

But a big hint: Make sure your submitted GDD is both concise and original. If I were them, I probably wouldn't jump on a Mario clone idea with much alacrity. Give 'em something small but worthy of sinking their teeth into.

All submissions are due by the end of the weekend, so get cracking!!!!!

You can check out details at Black Triangles or at GameDev.net.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

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