The fifth Indie Game Cup will be held at White Nights Moscow 2016

As part of the gaming business conference White Nights, which will be held in Moscow in mid-October, will host the fifth Indie Game Cup championship of independent teams’ game projects. We talked with the head of the White Nights organizing committee, Business Development Director of Nevosoft Yulia Lebedeva, about the purpose of the contest, its history and preliminary results.

Julia, hello! We are currently holding the Indie Game Cup for the fifth time. The first time it was held in the summer of 2015. The circle, so to speak, has closed. We can sum up the annual results already. But that’s not where I want to start. Let’s tell you first why we called the competition for the best project the championship?

Julia Lebedeva
There is a funny story connected with the name in general.

It is clear that we wanted to name the contest in a way that no one has called it yet, combining several important ideas: this is a competition for developers, only games can be submitted and teams that have not become (yet) giants of the industry can participate. At the same time, I wanted something dynamic and bright. Plus, the format of the competition also determines which trophies will be awarded to the winners. And the word cup came to my mind – that is, the cup, the championship. Immediately associations with racing and sports – that is, the same dynamics. And also the opportunity to give not glass figurines, as at the White Nights Awards, but cups – big, cool. I Googled it – no one had used the name Indie Game Cup before. And we settled on it! As it turned out, the name is wonderful – at least two different organizations have already used it as their own. I’ve noticed for a long time – it’s worth coming up with a good idea, it will definitely be cloned in one form or another. Everything is just like in games. This should be taken as an indicator of success and continue working on your project.

The word “indie” in the name of the contest is not for show. Another thing is that it is interpreted as widely as possible today. Let’s voice who we consider indies and why we decided to reward only them, leaving out equally worthy projects and teams.

By “indie” we mean small teams (no more than 15 people), who, as a rule, make a project with their own money, make decisions on their own. I respect such guys very much, even if they don’t succeed right away – the main thing here is not to stop. I haven’t made a single game myself, although I probably could have taught whole courses on game dev theory. However, theory is not practice, it takes a lot of courage and strength (besides understanding the basic laws) to take and make a game. And if you manage to make it so that our jury recognizes it as the best – it’s very cool, an example for everyone else. At the same time, I don’t think it’s much easier for a large and experienced company to make a hit – in fact, it’s still difficult, but when there are a lot of resources, you feel more relaxed.

I know why developers always take part in such activities. That there are thousands of projects on Mobile and Steam, and the recognition of colleagues is one of the ways to stand out, perhaps even attract the attention of a publisher who did not see the potential of the project on the stand or from a letter. And why do conferences need this?

We decided to do the contest as part of our developer support program. If you remember, a couple of years ago we started with the fact that we just raffled off $30 thousand in cash. By the way, then the company deservedly became one of the winners Mail.Ru Actually, after that, we decided to use the word indie in the name – so that small teams would not have to fight with corporations. To do this, they will have a market after the launch of the game, and our task is to let strong games stand out from the rest, and help their developers believe in themselves.

We also allocate about 500 square meters for developer stands, which we build and provide completely free of charge. In my opinion, this is a very cool opportunity to show your project to the maximum of relevant people.

How can I take part in the competition, how much does it cost and how does the selection take place?

Participation is absolutely free. To apply, you need to fill out the form, providing information about your game – video, build or link. We accept playable versions in beta stage and above. You can even submit an already released project if the launch happened within the last 6 months or the game is all in a softlonch. We do the initial selection in Nevosoft’s office – usually it takes a whole weekend, as a result we leave 10-20 games, and now they already get to the expanded jury. The members of the jury make assessments without consulting each other, and we are already summarizing the results. As a rule, the winners become known to us just a couple of days before the conference.

Who will judge this time, except you and me and Nevosoft game designers?

We already have Maxim Babichev, Developer Advocate in the jury VK.com , Andrey Ivashentsev, Chief Innovation Officer at Game Insight, Natalia Zhuravleva, Senior Business Development Manager at NetEase, Mike Hines, Developer Evangelist at Amazon, Oleg Pridyuk, Evangelist at King, Alexey Savchenko, Licensing Manager at Epic Games.

I noticed that recently there have been a lot of prize nominations at events (not only at ours, but also). Such a long list of winners. And there were a lot of them at the summer White Nights, too. As many as seven. Then to remember who got it and for what – that’s another problem. Don’t you think that a large number of awards devalues their value? And isn’t that why there will be four of them again at the autumn White Nights?

Those who have forgotten can look at our website.  But seriously, we are trying different formats. In the summer, we allocated one nomination for each sponsor of the championship, which is why there were so many of them. But in the end it turned out that the decision on the winner depended on one person. In my opinion, the figures do not lie, and the assessments of all the judges give a more objective picture. Therefore, we decided to return to Moscow three main nominations (best game design, best art and best story) plus the Grand Prix.

So it’s time for the results. The Grand Prix at White Nights has been received four times already. And how many projects in general have managed to participate, how many prizes have they received?

Usually we get about 70 applications for the Indie Game Cup, but in the summer there were more than a hundred of them in St. Petersburg. If I have calculated correctly, we have awarded 15 teams in a year. In addition to the cups, we gave them several Sony Xbox, six iPad Pro, a large number of Amazon tablets, HTC Vives, a radio-controlled helicopter. There was definitely something else, I don’t remember everything anymore. And, of course, the applause and envy of other developers. :)

Is there still an opportunity to apply?

Officially, no, but we’re waiting a couple more days. The form is here.  The acceptance of applications for the developers’ exhibition is also coming to an end! You can go to the Indie Game Cup, and to the exhibition in a single form here.

By the way, in Moscow we will again hold a Deconstruction Workshop, where we will disassemble the games from the exhibition. Deconstruction takes place on the second day, which means that the audience will have time to watch the games in advance. Experts will discuss the games in detail before your eyes in terms of the success of gameplay, game design, monetization, etc. Many people really liked the format in the summer, we will develop it so that more developers can get professional feedback and make their games even better. And that’s what it’s all about!