Following
last week's announcement of new Independent Games Festival judges, the full line-up of fresh and returning IGF judges has been announced, with late additions to the roster including
Fl0w co-creator Kellee Santiago alongside Big Huge Games' Brian Reynolds and many more.
ThatGameCompany's Santiago, who was previously a Student Showcase winner with student project
Cloud, and Neversoft co-founder Mick West, an industry veteran who writes the 'Inner Product' column for Game Developer magazine, are added alongside Games For Windows magazine's Darren Gladstone to round out the new judges for the 10th annual competition.
Other previously announced new judges for this year's IGF including Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, Bit-Blot's Alec Holowka, and Gastronaut's Don Wurster, and the
full line-up of over 40 judges includes many returning for the fourth or fifth time to help judge the competition.
The journalistic and content-centric contingent for this year's judging panel include Wired's game editor Chris Baker, Joystiq's Chris Grant, Wonderlandblog and Channel 4's Alice Taylor, Kotaku's Brian Crecente, and Joystick Nation author JC Herz.
The independent game stalwarts hopping onto the judging panel this time include Raigan Burns, previous IGF prize-winner with
N, Indygamer editor Tim W., and TIGSource editor Derek Yu, as well as new additions Santiago and Wurster. Other notable 'mainstream' game industry judges returning this year include Sony and Ubisoft veteran Mark Deloura, Foundation9's Chris Charla, Nihilistic's Mark Cooke, Midway's Richard Rouse III, and Big Huge Games founder Brian Reynolds.
As for the competition itself, the IGF ceremony will take place February 2008 at Game Developers Conference, with all finalists playable on the GDC show floor, and an Independent Games Summit again running alongside the main festival.
In addition, the
2008 IGF Main Competition will again be open to all independent developers to submit their games - whether it be on PC, console digital download, Web browser, or other more exotic formats. The prizes again total nearly $50,000, with a $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and the deadline to enter the Main Competition is Monday, October 1st 2007.
The 2008 IGF Student Competition will once again award the best student games, and this year will also include student 'mods' to existing games. As a result, the number of Student Showcase winners has been increased to 12. The deadline to enter the Student Competition is Monday, October 15th, 2007.
