iDevGames

Rosetta Stone, the company known for their foreign language learning software, is sponsoring a game programming contest. The Contest begins on July 17, 2009, and ends on July 19, 2009. All applications to participate in the Contest must be received by Rosetta Stone no later than 5pm (Eastern Time) on July 1, 2009. This event will be held at Rosetta Stone’s location in Harrisonburg, VA from July 17th – 19th, 2009. You must apply by July 1st to be considered for the competition. The prizes are:

• 1st Prize: Macbook Pro with 30 inch cinema display, three levels of Rosetta Stone Software and your game published on a Rosetta Stone webpage
• 2nd Prize: $500 and three levels of Rosetta Stone Software.

Gamers must be or have a team with at least one programmer with game development programming experience using either Flash, XNA, OpenGL, PyGame, etc. You will be asked to provide an example of past creations of any form or level in order to qualify. Teams may include up to four members. All team members must be 18 years of age or over to participate, or be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian at all times during their participation.

Related Links:

• Rosetta Stone Summer Game Jam Rules
• uDevGames – The Mac Game Development Contest

Background Info

After growing up wanting only to make videogames, and making a few small games with Pascal and later Hypercard in grade school, I released my first game for the uDevGames contest in 2004, called Kill Dr. Coté. It won the award for Best Gameplay, was a fan favorite, went on to be published by Freeverse, and got me my first job in the industry as a programmer.

Since then, my output has been scarce. I quickly followed up with “Arachnoid: Predator of Worlds” in July 2005, but after that, working full time in the industry drained me and thwarted any progress on independent work. Several years passed, and during that time I first yearned for the energy to work on a project, and after that failed, I started to even doubt whether I would be capable of such a project and still keep myself fed. When I heard that uDevGames 2008 was starting, I figured it would be the best time to find out once and for all. While in 2004, my purpose was to prove my talent and ability to the world, this time around it would be to prove it to myself!
Read the rest of this entry »