Winners of the GDC Expo Pass Giveaway!

It's been almost two weeks since I announced our Game Developers Conference expo pass giveaway, and I have been very pleased with the results. My inbox has been flooded with community members eager to come see us. I saw supporters who have been around since 2001, new users, established studios, dreamers, and everyone in between. It was such a hard choice narrowing down the candidate pool that we ended up giving away more than five (and I still wanted to give out more).

Anyway, without further ado, here are the community members who have received an expo pass. I hope you enjoy reading about their past contributions to GarageGames.com as much as I did!

The Winners!

Ted Southard has been with GarageGames for a long time, since the dot.com bust year of 2001. When asked why he should be given an expo ticket, he replies that he is "not really good at shameless self-promotion." It doesn't matter though, since his thoughtful forum posts, especially about MMO development, pretty much speak for themselves. Check out his game, Epic Frontiers, if you want to see what he's been developing lately.


If you like community members who submit lots of resources back to the community, you gotta love Paul Dana. His studio, Plastic Games, has been submitting their signature Gem-A-Day resources since the summer of 2008, and they're at 45 and counting! Plastic Games is also responsible for the Plastic Tweaker tool for TGE/TGEA that lets you change the fields of datablocks and objects in game and on the fly. Paul's been a long-time GG supporter too, having joined the community only five days after Ted!


Weston Tracy lives just a stone's throw away from GarageGames in not-so-sunny Portland, Oregon, working with Black Jacket Studios. Co-founded by former GarageGames employee and original TGEA developer Brian Ramage, Black Jacket Studios is a prime example of a studio living the indie dream. Although quiet on the GarageGames.com site, Black Jacket Studios has been a heavy contributor to InstantAction.com, especially in its early stages. Their hovercraft combat game, Metal Drift, is now in beta on the site.


Giving away our last two passes turned out to be three, thanks to the Brokeass Games team. Jon "Jondo" Orantes, Rex Piscator, and Ari Rule (who manages the BrokeAss Games profile on GarageGames.com) were all super stoked about a chance to meet up at GDC. Jon specifically said in his e-mail to me that "A vote for Jondo is a vote for AWESOMENESS!" And looking at BrokeAss Games' impact on the site, it's easy to see how that is true. Not only are they working on a game of their own, Ruin Online, they have also contributed many packs to our developer store, including the Female and Male Advanced Character Kits. Having an artistic bent, BrokeAss Games has beta tested both Houdini and Collada for us, a tremendous benefit since we rely heavily on our community for beta testing. Since BrokeAss Games has contributed to so many facets of GG.com, they were a solid choice to receive a trio of passes.

And the show approaches...

Thanks to everyone who put their name in for a GDC expo pass. We hope to run similar contests for other conferences, so keep your eyes peeled for future opportunities. And for those of you who can't make it to the conference, Michael Perry will be running live chats on the show floor which we think you'll enjoy (dates and times TBA).

It's only two weeks and counting to GDC (yikes!). I'll try to post one more time to give you a heads up on specific GarageGames booth events. You might have already heard of some of the demonstrations we'll be doing, including Torque 3D, Torque X 3D, Box Macabre, and Buccaneer. We also wrangled Eyal Erez to show off his iTGB game Sushi to Go. And, of course, no show is complete without some free giveaways, so if you want a red or dark purple GarageGames shirt, come to the booth and say you're a long-time community member, and we'll hook you up! (Note that we have limited supplies of shirts, so I suggest getting to our booth early on Wednesday or Thursday to ensure you get one.)

Hope to see ya'll soon in San Francisco!