Since August 5th, eager game designers have been hoping to be found worthy by Yahtzee Croshaw, by submitting their browser-based “Zero Punctuation” games for his review as part of the Escapist’s Zero Punctuation Stonking Great Game Contest.
Today, The Escapist has announced that 13 members of the game industry elite will be joining Yahtzee at the judges’ table to add their years of game design expertise to the evaluation of the contest’s entries.
“When we created the contest, it was our hope to just have a little fun and give aspiring game developers a chance to show us what they could do with the Zero Punctuation IP,” said Russ Pitts, Editor-in-Chief of The Escapist. “When we mentioned the contest to some of our developer friends, the response was overwhelmingly positive. It seems like the professional developers really wanted to see what our audience could do – and then judge them harshly.”
The Contest will cease accepting submissions in just under a month, and the winners will be announced in November. The celebrity judging panel, led by Yahtzee, will evaluate each submission on the strength of various factors, as well as delivering a final “judgment”. Pitts says the developer response to the contest has completely changed the tone of the event.
“Instead of the little Flash game contest we envisioned, now we’ve got this world-class competition shaping up. Designers who submit their games for this contest, will be getting their work in front of some big-name people who could really give them some monumental advice. This could potentially be a life-changing event for some young aspiring designer.”
The Escapist is proud to announce the Stonking Great Game Contest judges panel:
- Dan Teasdale: Design Lead, Harmonix
Richard Dansky: Central Clancy Writer, Red Storm
R. Michael Young: Professor, North Carolina State University
Chad Dezern: Studio Director, Insomniac
Nate Fox: Game Director, Sucker Punch
Richard Lemarchand: Design Lead, Naughty Dog
Greg McClanahan: Director of Games, Kongregate
Kelly Zmack: President, Radical
Rusty Buchert: Senior Producer, Sony
Nick Earl: SVP Visceral Games, EALA
Brian Bright: Project Director, Neversoft
Joby Otero: Chief Creative Officer, Luxoflux
Guha Bala: President, Vicarious Visions
The Escapist will be accepting entries until 12:00 PM (noon) EDT on October 19th. To find out how to submit a game, check out the main contest page HERE.
