In this quarter’s Games Capstone class teams were presented with a challenge to produce a full featured video game released in the wild, on major game distribution sites such as Kongregate and newgrounds so that their creations can be evaluated in the real world.
I am happy to report that the games are now out, you can see all of them here. Give them a try, they cover a variety of genres.
More interestingly the games gathered significant praise from the players around the world. Here I list some of the outcomes (new ones arriving hourly):
– Around a million players played all games in total in last 3 weeks
– Two games had full featured reviews by a site that reviews a few noteworthy games each week. You can read the two reviews here: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/05/chromatic.php and http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/06/hello_worlds.php
– The publicized games have now over 10 contract offers for distribution at different game sites, as well as offers for additional funding to develop the game for other platforms.
– Hello Worlds! Game has won two monetary prizes: a second place, in the best game of the week, and the second/third best game of the month (even though it has been out only for the last week of May) on Kongregate.com. This is particularly impressive given, that the competition is games with real budgets, and high quality production including the licensing rights for Wallace & Gromit branding.
– as of last Sat, hello worlds is now a #1 featured game on Kongregate!
– This week, Defenders of the Light and Time Decay are competing for the best game of the week honor at Kongregate.com
– The teams collectively earned a significant amount of revenue through awards, commissions, and distribution contracts, which will likely continue beyond the class.
Zoran