2014 Windows and Windows Phone Games Competition - Congratulations winners!

Hey guys, as Aurore has said previously, all 23 have been notified by e-mail and the public announcement will be this week.

 

There is no 'new deadline date'. The competition is over. Someone posted above that the results will be announced this week.

 

Hey Josh do you know if we were supposed to get confirmation emails that we were successfully entered into the competition? 23 have been notified is different than 23 have responded.

 

Ok thanks for the feedback. Then we didn't get lucky.

Maybe next time.

 

No, nobody received a confirmation email, you should've been displayed a confirmation page instead. Next time, to make sure you guys have something to look back on for reassurance, we'll set up automated emails.

 

Ahhh excellent! Actually excellent news there will be another contest ..
So just to make it complete..23 have responded would mean an incorrectly entered email address was not an issue..
23 notified still leaves it up in the air slightly...

 

It's ok notify winners, but because the scheduled time as explained in the contest page was not achieved, it would be great notify the rest of people.

I think a lot of guys here did a great effort to send the apps before the last call, and that didn't admit delays. So it is not a big problem if there is a delay in give the results as it was scheduled, but it looks once notified winners, the rest of people is not a problem.

Not very elegant.

Sorry for my english. I hope everybody understand me.

In fact, if this would be a constructive contest, everyone should be aware what others did that was better valued, to understand what kind of things are most valued and learn to make better games.

For me, as a Chief in a startup Studio, is very important to understand what others did to do success.

Thank you.

 

Ahh yes I would love to at least see what the judging results are so I can see where I failed.
But also currently the key question is did the 23 respond? Notified is a one way communication which means since there wasn't a confirmation email at least one of the email addresses could have been entered incorrectly therefore not able to respond to the prize.
Doesn't anyone else see that? Or am I crazy? hahah

 

Well that's not too much important for me right now. I didn't receive a notification so I'm not a winner. For me everything is done. What I want now at least is learn something from this.

Thank you.

 

Yes but the reason you didn't receive a notification was possibly you entered an incorrect email address.
I mean it's a remote possibility but until it's confirmed that everyone responded then it's an open question.

 

oh really? did you ever think that MAYBE you did NOT receive notification because you did NOT win? i dont know... maybe this is the best explanation and you can all cut with all this drama that has been generated! leave moderators alone with all this useless "ifs"... if(rank(entry) <= 23) { myData.currState = myStates.happy; } else { myData.currState = myStates.drama; protest(); unfairDrama(); wrongEmailDrama(); }

 

Oh no I'm very sorry! I didn't realize I was bothering the moderators. I actually thought I was being polite but maybe not!!! I'm very sorry....

 

Did anyone notice the winners were announced?

 

Congrats to the winners!

 

Beat us to it, see the winners here: http://unity3d.com/contest/windows

 

I think I didn't understand the rules of the contest. I thought you should have to deploy the game in the time of the contest. I mean the first prize is a game developed in 2012. I'm not going to say nothing about the quality of the game because it looks it has been very very already awarded. But I guess the prize of this time is for doing a conversion?? I don't know if the original version of 2012 was developed using Unity, but if it was, I guess this guys have won the easiest 50,000 USD in the history of contests

I'm not saying this to get any prize for me. Please do not understand me wrong. But for next time it would be great to have some concepts more clear.

What I try to say is It looks more original a conversion of a game released two years ago than other thing original in 2014.

I didn't analyze the rest of the games. I try to take a look to the first prize and I was a little bit stranged about it.

In fact I think this kind of contest only looks to motivate indie developers to develop for a platform which is the last to appear in the market, which is the Microsoft one. So awarding games that was best sellers two years ago, sure will motivate that guys, but don't know about others that are beginning right now.

As I said before, I'm 40 years old, and I'm CEO of a startup. So I'm not a child crying for not winning. Just to say that I think there is important to promote people doing big efforts. It is true that not anything could be a winner. But give a price to a game that was great two years ago it looks to be a joke.

Please this is a personal comment. It is not looking for anything. Just trying to be constructive about the achievement of the contest.
Thanks.

 

Exactly, I don't understand the rules too.
I published a new game in June for the contest, and I see the 1st price it's for a 2013 Game.
The 2nd and 3rd place are developed in 2014, so no problem.

 

@latas, I think they were eligible because they ported their existing game to Windows Store. The game was not previously available on Windows Store. The port to Windows Store is so new that they have not updated their site to reflect it.

 

I think it had to just not have been published on the windows store before Jun 30.
So not really breaking any rules..
The strange thing is you really have to look hard to find the winners.. Strange no real promotion....

 

I believe this game was originally developed using XNA and recently re-made in Unity to deploy cross-platform. Also as many others have said, it's a new game for the Windows store.

 

It's so bizarre though...I don't think the winners were even tweeted..

 

https://twitter.com/unity3d/status/502544575987458048
https://www.facebook.com/unity3d/posts/10152501728921773
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/08/21/and-the-winners-are/

 

hmmmmm I think that was after my observation hahaha
I nominate Josh for the ice bucket challenge

 

Because of that, as I said in the first lines of my post, I think I didn't understand rightly the rules. I thought the goal was to develop a game for Windows Store platform in the window time specified by the contest. When I saw the winners, I understand those games were not built in two months. So because of that I thought we had a good product, because we get something very good in two months.
That was my fault.

Anyway I suppose people who are close to the winners know they developed that game in XNA, and that's the only way to give them the corresponding value of the conversion. I mean, that kind of things I'm pretty sure are furthermore than strictly what you see in the game.

Maybe I wouldn't be a good judge, because I only could value what I was seeing. I'm not aware about those things.

 

It would have been nice if there was a try before you buy option for the winner. Unity can you pull some strings?
I think my game was better than a lot of the honorable mentions but one was really fun called Splemy.
Can we see our scores?

 

Hey @mike950, have you posted a link to your game?

 

Actually I haven't that would be cool to see how someone not attached to it thinks about it..
Here let me post the link:
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-in/app/tapnroll/73296575-3f17-4895-babc-400b1d37f1e7

 

Ok, so which games do you think yours is better than?

 

hahah nooo that wouldn't be nice...

 

And that's my point.

 

no because nobody will think that their game is worse than mine unless i specifically say which ones
so it doesn't matter if i say i think my game is better than some of them

 

Please re-read @co0led's post and let's end the drama now.

 

no drama i just thought my game should have won something

 

really? i dont agree with 65% of the list but ok...
btw... 0 fps type games? i guess judges are platform/puzzle game type lovers...

judges totally forgot the main idea behind the contest wich was to bring sharped visual appealing titles to windows platforms and not the "i like puzzles and platforms contest".

im very disapointed.
judges should not be partial as we all can clearly see by the winner list game types. judges should be open minded to all game types. plus, some of the games in the list are copycat.... nothing more to say.

anyway, grats to winners! everyone appreciates your work. keep it up!

 

yeah actually it's also disappointing because i put so much effort into it but it doesn't seem much effort was put in to make it a smooth and well planned contest

 

your game looks nice mike

 

Thanks c00led!!!

 

I'd like them to do a competition aimed more at those of us who are amateurs. I am really proud of my game, and I worked on it single-handedly (except I paid someone to create most of the art) for months. Seeing the types of games that won I had zero chance of winning anything against established games and full teams. I was hoping the Unity Pro licences would go to people like me.

http://app.lk/Clowntraptions

So if anyone with power is reading, please consider a competition for amateurs...the prizes don't need to be as dramatic, but there are a lot of us out there who do this as a hobby and to support the platforms we love.

 

@co0led That's exactly my feelings. Results are as I expected, pretty tendentious in my opinion. There are only the Lost Echo (which I think definitely deserves to be in top 3) and one or two other games which are not another "toon family fun" type of game.

Still, besides that, all these games seem pretty nice and well designed. Microsoft is a privately held company so they may do whatever they want and the rules are just general instructions for us.

Anyway, I guess I will migrate to Steam, possibly Android. Microsoft has made me a lot of trouble with my first game and I don't feel good with their platform anymore.

My game had a lot of downloads, good reviews, a lot of in-app purchases and even was the top new game. That lasted for the first week and then one shiny day later it has disappeared from all the game listings and has fallen down at the complete end of all searches, so being at places like 500th, it is pretty much impossible to find it right now. I've got in touch with other developers who has experienced the same, but Microsoft ignores our requests for a month (you may vote here and here).

 

Well it is not hard to understand what happens according to this. I will try to explain something that everyones knows but few people is brave enough to tell. Unless you will be a big studio with a lot of money to invest, the industry that get money around the indie developers are the tool developers. So, we still didn't have a great success with any of our developed games, but we have spent money in license for Apportable to convert Cocos2D Games from iOS into Android, we have spent licenses full for Unity and Unity iOS, we have spent money in the asset store, we have spent money in microsoft developer license, google play developer license, apple ios and mac developer license. So while we get a big S*** in this market we spend a lot of money to be part of the industry. If in this market only big developers would have their titles in the stores, there was not too much to choose, because the big list of titles are indie titles. But all those titles for Apple, Google and Microsoft now are really cheap. They put a candy in your mouth and they started a Contest with a prize of 50.000$. So a lot of people run a lot to develop games for the store. It is the cheapest way to make work hard a lot of people and fill the gap they have with respect to other platforms.
Indie games, 98% of all of them located in any store will be a complete fail. Promotion is very expensive, and many of them can not pay that. So what stores does is give you a day or two of glory. If you can grow a lot in two days, maybe you have an oportunity of success but if that doesn't happen, in next two days you will be hidden by the million of similar apps already uploaded in the stores.

So the editors in the stores are exhausted to see complete garbage. It is what I call, pure s*it. Thousands of apps or games are completely s*it. I include many of them made by us. The only I can be proud is all our games are original ideas, not false copies of success games.

So you have to coexist with the s*it. That s*it does not benefit to any user or customer, except for the owners of the platform. The Stores. They sell more phones as they say they've got more apps than the other platform. But those apps or games which are noise in the Store, eclipse your games if they're good.

In the market of casual users, which is mostly the users behind a mobile phone, there are no heavy players. So the only way to get success is continuosly doing marketing campaigns. Take a look to clash of clans for example. They earn around more than 1 million dollars per day. They've got million of players around the world, but they still are doing promotion. They invest a lot.

So many indie developers, when they understand, what is the real market conditions, they quit. You can see in the stores how there are a lot of orphan games of many developers. They tried once, and that was enough. A lot of work, a S*** of success. And if you have the wonderful idea to ask for 0.99$ for your game then you will end in the deepest hell of the store. There is no one that wants to pay any cent to play a game. People is happy if they have to play a false copy of the original if they don't need to pay.

So there is no filter. There is no quality analysis by the player.

So as a result, many developers that want to keep alive, move into Desktop Platforms, to enter into steam, and have any chance of success.

So this is the hard reality of this market. Indie developers are the people who makes grown the stores, but at the same time, the companies power them, telling them stories of bigs success and you can easily get a lot of money. That's not true.

Our small startup has spent 70.000€ in one year. We've released 25 games. Most of them developed in Cocos2D, for iOS, Android and Mac. Now in Unity. So there are two ways more or less. Some indie developers thinks that developing a lot of games that provides 0,50$ per day will make them win a lot of money if they develop 500 apps. Well could be. The effort is incredible.
Other idea is let's go to develop one only game which would be great.

The result finally is the same. Promotion is a killer.

No money, no success.

Think about it.

Sorry to look a bit pesimist about this, but I talk you from the experience. So, meanwhile there will be people thinking that making games the will win money, Apple, Google, Microsoft and so on, will be happy, and they'll don't to do anything furthermore to have happy developers.

It is like to live with the focus in an utopic idea. Something that will never happen but everyone wants to have.
I think I can not explain it better. Keep on developing, and some day you will win. Well this is the most clear example that only one of each million have success.

Thank you guys.

 

That's why I love Unity so much. It almost levels the playing field by allowing anyone to make great games for free!! Amazing...and bring them to so many platforms with the least amount of effort that ever existed. No I don't work for Unity hahah

 

Can only hope they define the rules better next time, and give each contest their own thread? I went in for the 'offer' as mentioned earlier on this thread. I got Level 1 rewards but then the offer simply ended. A new one has started but I guess I have to re-qualify for Level 1 again, even though I have the Win 8 Pro license and App Store publishing certificate as my rewards.
Would be nice to jump in at Level 2 this time around, and save the hassle of receiving all the Level 1 rewards again

 

well, I think back on my original statement.. this isn't really geared for a fresh cut into the market, but yet gives everyone an equal chance to participate. As it was in the first competition last year, it clearly is geared more towards ports then start-from-scratch development. Everyone "should" know, that anything worth a lick of salt takes time to make. Two months, with a fair and experienced team is doable... I would guess. But even then, the scope must be limited and focused.

I think the winners and runner ups are well deserved, they all obviously took a lot of effort.. even the ports. I'm sure they had their challenges and I would actually love to hear from the winners... share your experience and lessons learned. We could all learn a lot from them.

 

Creator of the third place game here. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to know about. I'm long overdue to write a devblog.

 

First off, congratulations on your win.

I'd be really interested to know more about overall project management and logistics: the size of your team, how you delegated work, how you kept things on track, etc.

 

Wow very nice! Downloading it now..
I'm baffled though..I don't see it featured on the windows store anywhere..that has to piss you off a little?

 

@SpacePixel
New "Offer" states: "Games must be published after July 20th 2014 to qualify." So unless you release a new game, your current game would not re-qualify.

@marshmatter
I second @mike950 's question

 

Cool, I'll write out something longer in blog format. But I will drop some prelim answers here.

Size of the team: It's a little difficult to describe as people have come and gone, there's core people and advisors. There's also a lot of overlap in terms of responsibilities.

We have:

CORE PEOPLE (Vision holders, works directly in game creation process)
Myself, Co-Director, Story, Programming, Art, Design
Christine, Co-Director, Producer, Design, Story
Errol, Additional Art and Design

PERIPHERY (work on the project, but don't interact directly with production)
Nick, Design Advisor (in early concepting phase)
Jonas, Soundtrack
Sarah, Script
Jeff and Kevin, Environment Audio and Engineering
Jacob, Voice coaching

ACTORS
There's 7-8 of them.

Logistics and Delegation:
The production up until now has relied mostly on me. I'm pretty much the only person that builds things in Unity, where I assemble and curate the content everyone is producing.

Things usually start with a beer-infused design meeting at a bar in Vancouver where we design out the chapter. This usually results in an abstract flow of the chapter, the main units and set pieces, the desired tone and meaning-experience. From there we start to formalize the design directly in Unity by building the environments, lighting them. And then we just iterate, add detail, address design issues. I might ask Errol to produce some specific light cookies or particles for a scene. I might request specific environmental audio. But we do that while building out in Unity - we never produce a definitive game design doc.

We prep a creative brief for the soundtrack. We get the actors into the booth and record. I assemble all of that content into the Unity build. Christine and I review, make notes, revise, etc, etc.

That all sounds fancy and organized, but it has been a little all over the map. We work other jobs and other projects. Also, what is currently available and what was judged by Unity was the first chapter and prologue which involved a lot of "figuring out" our process. Now that we're starting in to chapter 2, and we know the process, things are starting to feel much smoother. There's no awkward breaks to figure out the process of baking all the lighting - we just know the process now, and everyone knows where they fit.

Keeping things on track:
This is probably not something I can speak to too much. A flaw in our system right now is that I'm a massive bottleneck in production. And we're trying to fix that. We had originally slated to release chapter 1 in January, but other projects and a lengthy QA phase (more on that in the blog) meant we didn't ship until June.

I'll try to wrap up some additional ideas into a blog over the weekend. Christine and I were experimental theatre directors originally, so our overall process is very different.

 

Thanks, this is fascinating. How did your team come together? Are you funded or just friends working together? How do you keep people motivated?

 

Not at all. You have to understand how features work. They change daily, and they also vary from marketplace to marketplace. We might not be visible on your storefront today, but we are featured on another one. We are actually featured in the United States today, but only on Nokia phones. This has been our 3rd or 4th US feature.

That being said, in our dialogues with Windows Phone store people, we've decided we're not pushing our storefront presence too hard until chapter 2 is ready.