Epic Announces New 'Make Something Unreal' Mod Contest

Epic Games has announced a new mod competition around its Unreal Tournament 3, called the "$1 Million Make Something Unreal Contest," sponsored by Intel and featuring an Unreal Engine 3 license as a grand prize. To participate, aspiring developers create mods for the PC version of UT3 in a range of categories including environments, weapons, gameplay, tools, vehicles and more. Epic last held this competition in 2005 with support from Nvidia, with Tripwire's WWII vehicle simulation Red Orchestra taking home the grand prize for Best Mod. Red Orchestra later became available for purchase on Valve's Steam service. In addition to the Unreal Engine 3 license, possible prizes include Intel software development products, Velocity Micro PCs and other cash prizes - altogether totaling $1 million. Entrants will be judged in four preliminary phases and a grand final; Judging will begin in June 2008 and will conclude in fall 2009 with the grand prize announcement. Interested parties can find full information at makesomethingunreal.com. Epic VP Mark Rein commented, "Unreal Engine 3 is used by many of the industry’s leading game companies, so this is truly a chance to prove your worth and get your foot in the door of the game business while having your work potentially exposed to millions. To get mod-makers started, the collector’s edition of Unreal Tournament 3 includes over 20 hours of 3D Buzz’s professional-level video training materials for the Unreal Engine 3 toolset."