Great Games Experiment Contest

The Great Games Experiment
This is the best part of my job, giving away stuff. It's wicked fun. GarageGames is giving away tons of little freebies just in time for the Xmas season. This is a very informal "contest", just open to our friends and family, site users, and people working the Great Games Experiment. As a developer, the great games experiment is one of the most important things to happen for you in a long time. I can't be more serious about this.

If GGE takes off, this will level the playing field for all developers. Jeff Tunnell is planning to write more about this in depth so I won't steal the thunder, but we are already hearing stories very early in beta from developers who are telling us that because they have been promoting their games on GGE they have been selling a lot more games, just by simply making game profiles. We are seeing gamers flock to this site, even this early, and they are finding games that are like the games they play, games they have never heard of, and making friends who like similar games. Seriously, if we can keep this going, in a few months this will be one of the most powerful tools available to all game makers, whether it's someone in a garage, or a giant studio.

We have big plans for GGE and our web development guys are cranking on it every day and doing some incredible web 2.0 stuff. So how do you get involved? Pretty easy. Word of mouth, tell other games, tell other developers, put links on your website, use the gamer tags, talk about it on your blogs, and most importantly, we really want our friends and family to get involved and fill out parts of the site before we move onto the next stage. GGE is very intimate right now. We have thousands of requests coming in everyday for beta access, but we are scaling up in a controlled environment and only a few hundred are currently allowed in until we have tried and tested our infrastructure.

To help this along, we are giving away "GG Prize Packages". Here are the competitions:

Most Quality Games Submitted.

We are watching who is submitting games and eventually the site will get to the point where it will be hard to submit games that don't already exist. We want more games now though! We are giving away prizes to the people who submit the most quality games. This means filling out the page correct, making sure it has a box shot, screenshots, and more. Shell pages with no content don't help anyone know more about the game! We are making it easier and easier everyday to add more games, and right now, we really hope people add quality game pages! The day we are checking to see how many games are submitted will be December 18th.

Best Profile

On December 18th, we will also be checking out a variety of profiles to see who has the best looking profile (that isn't a GG employee). This means we will be looking at who has the most quality content, best looking design, best Avatar, etc. There isn't a hard definition of what makes a good profile, just make it good! We'll be sure to look at everyone that's up, but if you don't even have an Avatar, we might skip over you. :)

The prize packages for the below contests are the same, minus the GG jackets and IGC 04 T-Shirts (we only have 2 of each):

Most Flash Games Submitted.

To whoever submits the most flash games to the site, with quality pages for each game (reviews, descriptions, box shot, etc), we will be awarding the prizes according to the list below.

Most AAA Games Submitted.

To whoever submits the most AAA and Mainstream games to the site, with quality pages for each game (reviews, descriptions, box shot, screenshot, features list, etc), we will be awarding the prizes according to the list below.

Most Indie Games Submitted.

To whoever submits the most Indie and Non-Mainstream games to the site, with quality pages for each game (reviews, descriptions, box shot, screenshot, features list, etc), we will be awarding the prizes according to the list below.

1. GG Jacket, only a few left in existence!
2. GG Green collared shirt, also on their way out. We are switching our tshirt set next year.
3. GG Padfolio, stamped with the GG logo and Torque Logo.
4. Old GG Pen (old design that is)
5. New GG Pen (much easier to use)
6. Game Programmer's Guide to Torque
7. 3D Game Programming all in One
8. GarageGames Mousepad
9. A stack of 100 Legions Temporary Tattoos
10. GG Branded Notepad
11. IGC 04 Tshirt
12. Pat Wilson Tshirt
13. Rack 'Em Up Roadtrip Tshirt
14. Zap Tshirt
15. GarageGames Coffee Mug
16. 2 GG Buttons
17. GarageGames Hat
18. Ultra Rare Marble Blast Ultra Hat

For Second Place:

1. GG Green collared shirt, also on their way out. We are switching our tshirt set next year.
2. GG Padfolio, stamped with the GG logo and Torque Logo.
3. Old GG Pen (old design that is)
4. New GG Pen (much easier to use)
5. GarageGames Mousepad
6. A stack of 100 Legions Temporary Tattoos
7. GG Branded Notepad
8. Rack 'Em Up Road trip Tshirt
9. Zap Tshirt
10. 2 GG Buttons
11. GarageGames Hat

For Third Place:

1. Old GG Pen (old design that is)
2. GarageGames Mousepad
3. A stack of 100 Legions Temporary Tattoos
4. 2 GG Buttons
5. GarageGames Hat

If that wasn't enough, we are updating the prize list! We are giving out a free copy of either TGE 1.5, Minigolf Mania, TGB, or Tim Aste CP #2 (your choice) to the 1st place winners of each contest.

So hopefully this is a fun little thing and I hope as many participate as possible! We have much more exciting stuff coming in the future (gift certificates, video cards, a private tour of Tim Aste).

We have much bigger and more expensive contents planned for launch down the line, but this is something we are keeping "in the family" with our limited beta. Here are some pictures of the schwag we have to give away, and Sales Associate Michael Blenden modeling the GG Green Collared T-shirt for us:


Just look at all those stocking stuffers.

Other than that, we are always cranking on stuff here at GG. The holidays have arrived so the GG crew is getting all trussed up and getting ready to take some time off to visit families and friends (except Ben Garney, you are not allowed to leave). Channa Langley, our great office manager (whose been helping me out quite a bit lately with the Intern program) has done a great job on the front entrance, and the Skylight room guys got some craziness going on:


Monday is the launch of XNA Game Studio Express (and maybe Torque X?), so if your up in the Redmond / Kirkland area, be sure to stop by the Microsoft Campus and enjoy the XNA open-house.

We have AFX almost ready and should be out any day now, for those of you who have been waiting quite awhile.


We also have several other packs & tools coming down the line very soon for sale here at GG, such as FX Pack#2, L3DT with Atlas Export, PD Particles, Matt Sayre's huge Audio pack, and many more.

Our latest release, FX Pack #1 by Games Extract is simply put: awesome. Check it out, no action game should be without this product. :)

Additionally, if you haven't been following the Games Store recently, it's worth checking out. Josh Dallman has been populating it like crazy with actual games, a first for the website in a long time. :)

New releases include Kachinko, Phantasia, Ultimate Duck Hunting, and Minigolf Mania!

I'm sure I'm probably forgetting something to pack into this plan, but I guess this will do for now. I'm not in marketing so I don't get paid to write this much, and I'm not very good at it. So remember people, use those beta invites, take some time to spruce up your profiles, and submit games and all the sudden you might find a big box of G embroidered stuff on your doorstep.