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.

Call for submissions

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 LARPS 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.

Note that the new deadline for submissions is August 20, 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.

Prizes

Those submitting to the digital games category will be eligible for one of these prizes, which will be decided by popular vote.

• Adobe – Full version of Adobe Creative Suite
  
• Unity – Unity Pro license
  
• Wacom –  Intuos5 Medium tablet
• Dell – X51 gaming PC and M18x

More prizes are on the way, stay tuned!

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

If you have a game, please submit it via our online system.

Scheduled for Saturday, September 22 at various venues on the MIT campus and Microsoft NERD center in Cambridge, Boston Festival of Games is a celebration of independent game development in a variety of media and genres. The event is free to attend and open to the public. Attendees are invited to vote on game showcase entries.
The Boston Festival of Indie Games offers the opportunity for fest attendees to play video games, location-based games, tabletop games and interactive fiction in a relaxed, non-competitive environment. Additional event features include a game jam, art exhibit, film screenings and special guest speakers from the national indie games space.

There will be a special highlight showcase of games developed by the MIT Game Lab, which has created nearly fifty games over the last five years, a number of which have gone on to receive national accolades and commercial success.

Caroline Murphy, co-director of Boston Indies and co-producer of Boston Festival of Indie Games, offers, “We’ve been seeking a chance to demonstrate the deep wealth of independent game development, by both individuals and teams, in the Boston area for some time. Boston Festival of Indie Games is providing us with a high-visibility forum to showcase innovative games and provide recognition to the game developers who have worked so hard on their craft.”

Rik Eberhardt, studio manager for MIT Game Lab, adds, “MIT Game Lab has a long history of exploring the potential of creative play as a means of connecting people in the community with one another. By participating in the Boston Festival of Indie Games, we have the opportunity to demonstrate the power of play with games representing many themes, from entertainment to education, art to activism, science to socialization and more.”

Independent game developers are encourages to submit their games for showcase consideration by August 10th. The Boston Festival of Indie Games showcase is an opportunity for independent game developers to show off their games, get feedback from the public and win great prizes. Voting will be on an open-to-the-public basis on a variety of categories.
Non-digital games can be submitted to the street games or tabletop games portion of the festival.

For complete details on submitting independent games to the festival showcase, please visit the Boston Festival of Indie Games web site at www.bostonfig.com. Digital game submission entry fee is $15, with a student entry fee of $10.
The day-long festival follows the MIT Game Lab Symposium on Friday, 9/21, a gathering of game industry professionals and academia centered around the latest developments of the MIT game program.

About Boston Festival of Indie Games:

www.bostonfig.com.

Boston Festival of Indie Games is a 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 media, including video games, location-based games, tabletop games and interactive fiction. Produced under the non-profit auspices of Be Epic, a Boston location-based games production group, Boston Festival of Indie Games is focused on creating an intersection between community, academic and independent interests in game play.

About MIT Game Lab:

http://gambit.mit.edu/

MIT Game Lab brings together scholars, creators and technologies to teach, conduct research and develop new approaches to applied game design and construction. Ranked by the Princeton review as the #2 Game Design Program in North America, the MIT Game Lab maintains MIT’s roles as leader in the study, design and development of games. The MIT Game Lab’s goal is to explore, educate and engage the public by creating groundbreaking games, interactive online courses and new applications to real world challenges.
About Boston Indies:
www.bostonindies.com
Boston Indies is a community of dedicated independent game developers in Massachusetts and the surrounding area. Boston Indies works to foster a sense of community among Boston’s independent game developers, facilitate monthly meet-ups and other related community events, encourage developers to create games independent of large budgets and large company ties, provide a safe environment to obtain critical feedback on game development works in progress and serve as a brain trust for important information sharing among local independent developers.