Microsoft SA – Game Dev Competition

Yesterday was Microsoft’s Developer Days ‘09 event and I was fortunate enough to attend. This kind of event is there for developers to see what new technologies Microsoft has on the development front… or as one of my work colleagues said “DevDays: Drinking on company time”. It was a very interesting and enriching day but I’m not going to bore you with all the details, so I’ll just skip along to the actual point of this article.

Even though this event does not really have anything to do with gaming, there was one informal session during the lunch break that touched on game development using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio. What was mentioned in this session, is that Microsoft is running a game developer competition where you can win a trip to Tech-Ed South Africa 2009. The competition rules are simple:

1. The game that’s the most FUN to play, WINS.
2. The competition starts on the 10th of March 2009 and entries close on the 30th June 2009.
3. Final game development for Windows only (sorry, no Xbox this time round).
4. The creator of the winning game wins a trip to Tech-Ed South Africa 2009, subject to the completion of an affidavit of eligibility;
5. Because all judging is done by community developers, we will also be awarding a prize to one of the ‘judges’.
6. You can start playing games as soon as they’re uploaded, but you can vote only once. For this reason voting starts on the 1st of July 2009 and finishes on 10th of July 2009.
7. The winner will be announced on the 13th of July 2009

So for all you developers out there, why not grab the XNA and start developing the next AAA title. For more details and links to XNA resources go to BoringGamesAreDead

Last Updated: March 27, 2009