Stacking Up In Boston
by Tanner Hastings
When you’re deep in the holiday season, it sometimes feels like next October is more than a lifetime away. Unfortunately, the deadline for submitting booth applications for the Boston Festival of Indie Games comes faster than one might think. For aspiring game developers, it’s important to understand just what the Boston FIG committee are looking for, so they can ensure the pet projects they’ve spent hundreds of spare time hours on getting their chance for a little spotlight. To help out some of these neighborhood underdogs, the Boston Post Mortem held a talk on what it takes to not only gain a booth at the Boston FIG but even a few tips to earning one of those coveted Figgie awards!
The Boston Chapter of The Stacks was there to listen in on the conversation, spread the word about our work across the nation, and even ask a few questions about setting up a booth of our own!
This talk was led by Mary Yovina, the Vice President of Digital Curation at the Boston FIG. Her presentation covered all the categories a game can be submitted under Compelling Game Mechanics, Innovation in Art and Narrative, Accessibility and Inclusion, Multiplayer and Connected Gameplay, and New Developers and Student Games. While plenty of games feature more than one fine example of these qualities, Yovina explained that submitting a game into just one category allows other developers to get a chance to win awards and earn some recognition. After all, the Boston FIG features former AAA studio designers just a booth away from undergrads displaying their semester’s final project; divvying the games into five categories helps to level the playing field.
Yovina also stressed that a game doesn’t need to be fully complete in order to get a booth. A polished demo works just fine and is just as eligible to win an award at the end of the convention.
The overall turnout for the event was on the small side, and the presentation hardly took up a third of the time slot BPM reserved. That left attendees plenty of time to mingle and network. The Boston Stack got a chance to chat with not only the speaker but some of our friends at Proletariat Games, who raised nearly a thousand dollars for Stack-Up earlier this year!
Having learned a little bit more about this convention Stack-Up has attended for two years now, the Boston Chapter of The Stacks left the office of Intrepid Pursuits with some encouraging thoughts for FIG 2018…including a potential booth to show attendees more than just our red shirts!
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