Tencent seeks the ideal indies for Games Without Borders Awards

As it has grown, the plan has helped draw focus to the games that would otherwise get missed in the sea of noise about games. And it assists surface developers who have to have to break into the Chinese market place or break out of a distinct area to worldwide accomplishment. This year, the program’s prize pool expanded to consist of factors that will assistance developers finish their games, such as hardware, localization, conference attendance, cloud credit, and mentorship, on major of money prizes and promotion.

After getting screened by Tencent and voted upon by a panel of judges, the winners will be announced in October at an occasion held by each Tencent Cloud and Intel Game DevBoost. Last year, more than 200 teams from 30 nations applied.

How it came about

The awards began in 2018 initially as a contest to discover games that have been revolutionary or inventive, and it was focused nearly exclusively on Chinese domestic developers, with only a handful of international titles taking aspect, mentioned Indigo Zhu, head of Tencent Independent Game Incubator, in an e mail to GamesBeat.

“Over the past couple of years, we’ve altered our focus a little, in that while we still want games that do something completely new, it’s no longer a prerequisite for participation – this is now a competition for all indie games, and we’re as keen to see beautiful homages to classic genres as we are games that try to rewrite the gameplay rulebook,” Zhu mentioned. “By expanding the scope of the awards program and having a dedicated International channel, we saw more than 200 international games being submitted for consideration last year.”

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The plan resides with the Tencent Institute of Games, whose mission is to assistance understanding sharing, sector communication and to assistance cultivate talent all through the sector. This can take a lot of types, such as university partnerships, but it can also take the type of anything like the awards, Zhu mentioned.

“Running this contest was a way of supporting indie developers globally and identifying standout talent and projects,” Zhu mentioned. “For the international side, it also had a benefit of acting as a form of cultural exchange.”

A cultural exchange is timely since international tensions rose in the course of the administration of Donald Trump and they haven’t enhanced considerably beneath Joseph Biden.

Zhu mentioned the firm plans to focus on the merchandise and teams participating in the competitors. In the future, as a aspect of our neighborhood, the participating teams will have the chance to participate in a variety of promotional activities. Ultimately, the purpose is to market the diversity of games about the world.

Prizes

With every year, Zhu mentioned the group has absorbed the feedback and attempted to make it superior. The prize quantity was a huge query, and the group opted to make smaller sized money prizes as effectively as hardware and other assistance. That was deemed superior than a substantial, focus-grabbing money prize for the prestige.

“In the course of preparing for the 2021 awards, we looked at what many indie developers needed and, for a lot of them, a smaller cash prize, some hardware and some support would be a huge deal,” Zhu mentioned.

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This was anything that Emilie M. Reed wrote about in a piece on arts funding and Adrian Hon spoke about it and it caught Zhu’s ear.

“When looking at prizes we wanted ones that would still be appealing to more established, larger teams, but genuinely make a big difference to the ‘common’ indie,” Zhu mentioned. “And, by splitting the prize fund into multiple smaller pots we can make sure to help as many teams as possible.”

That philosophy extends to all the prizes – every single group gets Intel hardware, for instance. With regards the no cost localization prize – if a game currently has a publisher, then it is most likely they currently have a simplified Chinese translation, but for a one or two-particular person group, working on their 1st game, it is achievable the game only exists in their native language, Zhu mentioned.

“By offering this prize, we can help them reach an entirely new market and, again, the prize will make a genuine difference to the success of a team,” he mentioned.

For bigger teams, the chance to get their game in front of Chinese players is nevertheless attractive, even if they do not have to have some of the other prizes. Beyond this, it has to be simple to take aspect. If devs or publishers have to fill out a million types or commit days at a time to preparing, they’ll honestly not bother – they currently have adequate on their plate, Zhu mentioned.

“So, we structured the competition to be completely online from day one, only take an hour or so to sign up, and then there’s no other involvement necessary unless they opt in to a promotional activity or announcement,” Zhu mentioned.

Targeted developers

Tencent desires a mix of developers whose games that have an established following, higher production values, and broad appeal. It also desires titles that not that a lot of individuals have seen prior to.

“The result of this approach is that we’ve seen titles such as Cloudpunk, Haven and Spellbreak – all relatively well known indie titles, with super high production values, that found an audience,” Zhu mentioned. “And we can try to mix that in with titles such as Pull Stay, In My Shadow, Super Cable Boy and Peaks of Yore, all games from less-established devs that might go under the radar for a lot of people. It’s important to us that our awards activity doesn’t just end up signal boosting the same titles that already have the spotlight. We try to share it as equally as we can.”

The other point Tencent does is to make sure that the awards are genuinely worldwide. A lot of entrants come from North America and Western Europe. But Tencent also tries to attain teams from India, from Brazil, from Tunisia and so on.

“There’s some really impressive devs there right now, but the teams in these regions don’t always have the same promotional and networking opportunities that a team in California might have, for example,” Zhu mentioned. “One of the things we’re proud of is that we’ve seen a lot of titles (and winners!) come from all across the world.”

The plan finds the indie titles primarily by way of the judges. The employees at various Tencent studios like Timi and WeGame screens out games that do not meet the guidelines or criteria, filtering by way of hundreds of submissions. Then the judges get a crack at a shorter list. And the judges come from each Tencent and external producers from the sector. The judges this year consist of Callum Underwood, Elle Osilli-Wood, Kim Pallister, Anna Megill, Elaine Gómez, Markus Khulo, Meredith Hall and Josh Tarrant.

Too a lot of games?

I asked if there have been as well a lot of games now.

“I’m not sure I would put it as there being ‘too many games’ but it’s certainly true that modern game development and social media has created a signal-to-noise ratio problem,” Zhu mentioned. “It’s easier than ever for developers to start making games thanks to Unity, Unreal, GameMaker Studio 2, Godot etc. as well as distribution platforms being more open than before. Fundamentally, this is a good thing both for players and creators, but the result is a lot of games struggling for attention.”

Zhu pointed out that other people attempting to discover superior indies consist of IWOCON, Wholesome Direct, and the Guerilla Collective.

“They all try to lift a handful of titles into the spotlight but the indie game industry is so competitive right now, it’s tough, and it’s also hard to make sure that the people who end up viewing this  content aren’t just other people already in the industry – you want to get the games in front of people who buy and play games,” Zhu mentioned. “They all have their own solutions to this problem. And for us, one part of our solution is to take two games to a Chinese industry event so can guarantee that players can actually get their hands on the titles. Another part is translating interviews and articles about these games for China-side socials. We’ve tried to find multiple ways to tackle these problems.”

The Chinese market place

Last year, Tencent took two international games, Zelter and The Riftbreaker, to the WePlay Expo in Shanghai, as the firm felt they would be enjoyable and understandable to a regional audience and match in with the loud atmosphere at these sorts of events, Zhu mentioned. More applications come in from Chinese mobile game developers, as effectively as Computer game makers.

“In the Chinese competition area, we find that the products sometimes have strong Chinese flavor or characteristics, which in fact has a lot to do with the orientation of Chinese creators,” Zhu mentioned. “By comparison, in the global competition area, products often have the characteristics of the global market. At the same time, also welcome products with strong regional characteristics.”

But the plan focuses on superior merchandise, regardless of exactly where they’re from. And as soon as the winners are chosen, each Tencent and its partners amplify the winners. But that does not normally translate into added sales for a game. Intel GameDev Boost has been especially useful in supporting winners, Zhu mentioned.

“Our prizes are designed to increase commercial opportunities,” Zhu mentioned. “Devs are more likely to be able to finish their games due to prize money. Devs will have better resources to test and optimize their games due to receiving Intel hardware. Devs will be able to reach more markets thanks to localization. More players will actually be able to play these games, thanks to the demo booths. And multiplayer teams will have infrastructure support thanks to the support we are receiving from Tencent Cloud and the prize they are offering to developers. All of these prizes make commercial success more likely.”

On major of that, China can be a difficult market place to market in, Zhu mentioned.

“So by translating articles, producing sizzle reels, running interviews in Chinese on our channels here, we’re effectively marketing these games for free and expanding the pool of potential buyers for when a game launches,” Zhu mentioned. “This can fall under the ‘exposure’ category, I know, but it’s a type of exposure that 99% of teams don’t have access to.”

The awards can also be a wonderful way to network and make connections. Winners can discover publishing partners following the awards, and Tencent may well make a decision no matter if it desires to incubate a winning title.

“As part of this, we can draw from the best experts across Tencent’s development teams, and make use of Tencent’s market advantages, operational experience, and networks to help these products reach commercial success,” Zhu mentioned. “That’s another way we can help these teams turn a promotional opportunity into a real commercial benefit.”

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz