The board game contest went beautifully. I can't thank everyone enough for all of the support whether you participated and developed an entry, voted and supported the contestants, hosted the entries during voting or just plain rooted on our contestants. I want to thank everyone for your support of
our mission. Our success depends upon those developers and participants.
SDGuild contests could use some help, however. Cash prizes are cool and all, but let's get some help from all of you SDGuildlings [see what I did thar? hurrhurr] for some prizes. (Cash prizes will also exist along side this idea. Don't worry :P)
I'm not asking for your money. (aside from the donate button over in the top box on the left of
my page, but that's a different endeavor altogether) You can donate a subscription to your game for however long you like be it one month, six months, a year, lifetime or whatever other timeframe you wish. You can do that
by clicking here. The link will take you to the "Game Author Donations" portion of the SDGuild's forum. Thanks ahead of time for anyone that either considers it or gifts us a subscription to give away in a future contest.
It doesn't have to be a subscription at all. You can donate anything you like. (Except Lebron James jerseys. We don't accept those.)
Simple Developments Hosting Services are still lacking clients and customers. I think the prices are fairly cheap. If you're looking for hosting, give us a shot, and we'll do our best not to disappoint. All money made during this will be put directly into the contest prize fund and given back to our winners. I'm hoping to generate enough revenue to start offering larger cash prizes as well as a prize for the silver medal. Let's see what we can get done!
We're not all about contests, however. That's just a clever rouse to make you guys develop something! That's right! The secret is out of the bag now. You caught me. So, tell me. Have any of you learned anything yet? Has anyone learned the lesson I'm trying to teach? The lessons go hand-in-hand with my "It isn't about the size" blog posts I made not too long ago. (You can find
the first one here and the
second one here in case you missed them.)
Here's the basic overview of the idea:
1) Games are meant to be fun. It doesn't take a year to make a fun game. It only takes a good idea and some effort.
2) Making games is also meant to be fun. For all of you that participated in any of our contests, I'm sure you had a few smiles and a bit of a sense of accomplishment at least once or twice.
3) It doesn't take a genius to make a game. Believe me, I'm no genius. (surprise!)
4) Developing, programming, pixel art, GFX and anything that goes with it is a bit addictive. Once you start down that path, you're hooked.
I remember my first game. It was ugly! The object of the game was to run around digging holes to see what you can find. I spent forever on it, due to fail knowledge and inexperience. But I remember when everything finally came together and my crooked little stick figure dudes were shoveling their rumps off and finding gold, jewelry, underground monsters to fight and all kinds of cool stuff. I was proud of that accomplishment. No matter how ugly it was.
So, get in on the hosting and if you'd be so kind, help us out with some prizes to make things more interesting.
Thanks for reading
Don't wait for a contest! Make something!