How does the Indie Prize work and what is it?

As part of the Casual Connect autumn session, which will be held in Tel Aviv, a showcase of indie projects will traditionally take place within the framework of the Indie Prize international scholarship program. We talked about what kind of program it is with its director, Yulia Moshkareva.

Hi! Let’s start with such a basic question for those who, suddenly, do not know: what is the Indie Prize?

Julia MoshkarevaGood afternoon!

The Indie Prize is an international scholarship program for indie developers, which is one of the initiatives of the CGA.

By founding the developer support program, CGA has set itself the goal of supporting the industry, helping indie developers to remain INDIE! Since the Indie Prize is not a commercial project, we do not earn money from developers. We earn money at the conference and we have the opportunity to share what CGA is doing with joy and success.

What do you usually mean by indie (and do you generally check developers when they submit a project for a competition, is it indie or not, and if you check, then how)?

We have restrictions to weed out large developer companies that receive support from publishers and already feel confident in the market: the company must be independent and developers must own at least 50% of the company. And so we accept all developers who need support for further development.

Do you usually receive a lot of applications?

Since the beginning of this year alone, we have received more than 1,000 applications for the Indie Prize. We have a competition for one place in 3-4 games.

How many teams do you usually get at a showcase?

Depends on the venue of the conference. In Tel Aviv, we are limited in space and there will be only 56 tables for indics.

And in general, why participate, what do developers get from participating?

Indie Prize is a place where developers can exchange experiences, test their game on gaming industry professionals, make useful connections and meet old and new friends from all over the world.

We are proud of the finalists, nominees and winners of the Indie Prize and, of course, we transmit information about the participants and winners to the press contacts. We also promote the finalists in our social media and the media of our partners.

And, of course, the winners receive prizes from sponsors. We try to choose sponsors who provide checks for services to promote and develop the game, so we try to help developers use services from leading companies for free, as well as understand how it works and how to make money on it.

As for the participants of the Indie Prize showcase, the scholarship program covers the cost of entrance tickets to Casual Connect (~ 1000 USD), we provide a place to show games along with the best indie developers from around the world. We also book and pay for a hostel for Indie Prize participants at the expense of Casual Connect

Everyone?

We book a certain amount (a hostel is usually 40% of all applications) and according to the principle, whoever first applies for free accommodation will receive it for sure.

That is, if you really want and have thought about everything in advance, then you can definitely get free accommodation?

Yes.

But only if the jury liked your project?

Exactly.

And who chooses projects and how?

In order to ensure independent selection, we have assembled a panel of judges from gaming industry professionals. For each Indie Prize selection, we involve 20-30 judges from various companies. Most of the judges come to us on recommendations, we try to make the composition multifaceted, so that there are also representatives of the press, publishers, monetization, promotion, developers who have already built a successful business.

The sponsors of the nominations, who support the winners with prizes, often also want to participate in the selection of the winner, for example Unity, Google, Emmersv, Amazon, Photon, Rovio, IPC Ventures – participated in the selection of the best games among 26 judges for the previous showcase in San Francisco.

But isn’t that the only way to get into the Indie Prize?

Yes, there is another one.

A showcase (any showcase at conferences) is a useful, and I would say necessary experience to introduce the game to the world and the beginning of the path to transforming a hobby into a profitable business. We provide interesting conditions for developers to participate, and therefore many local communities contact us and ask about the opportunities for their guests to participate in the Indie Prize.

So the idea was born to give local events the opportunity to nominate the best game of the region for participation in the Indie Prize without our internal competition (since the best game will pass an independent qualifying round at their event). To date, we have about 50 partner events that send the best games to the international Indie Prize showcase from all over the world.

There are regions where large official conferences for game developers are not held, for example, in Belgrade, Serbia, there is a very active indie community, they gather a meeting of developers with a showcase specifically to choose the best game from the region, the main prize of which will be the Indie Prize scholarship program.

And the last question: why did the Indie Prize become so important for the conference, which, as far as I remember, initially had neither an emphasis on indie, nor this competition at all?

We couldn’t help but notice that the conference guests are showing interest in developers, and the more talents we collect, the more interest the conference arouses among publishers, investors, traffic providers and other representatives of the gaming industry.

Plus, indie developers are an inspiration for the gaming industry, and the CGA is not the only organization that understands this and tries to support the indies in every possible way. For example, in San Francisco, Samsung was the main sponsor of accommodation for developers and we were able to use them to book accommodation for 100 Indie Prize participants at the Marriott, the conference hotel.

By the way, the deadline for submission to the Indie Prize showcase in Tel Aviv is very soon – August 30, hurry up (link).