Now - September 30, 2020
You’ve taken the courses. You’ve built the levels. You know how to make a game. It’s time to show your stuff.
GDHQ Proudly presents the Ultimate Game Jam which will run now – September 30, 2020. 8 months to build a complete game that will be for sale to the mass public and will be promoted by GameDevHQ for an entire year! Not too shabby.
This is nuts... why not make a game jam 48 hours with prizes?
Such a great question. So here’s the backstory. If you have ever published a game, you know that the weeks leading up to finally completing your game are exciting. Finally the big day is here – your release date. You’re checking analytics. You’re seeing sales. Life is good. A week goes by. Sales drop. Another week goes by. You don’t check the analytics anymore because it disappoints you. A month goes by and you forgot you even built a game. This is a reality for a solo game developer. There is more to becoming a successful game developer than just building a game. There’s marketing, print, commercials, promotions, giveaways, forums, competitions, and so much else that needs to happen in order for your game to remain relevant and sticky. So instead of giving you a pat on the back, a gift card, and say “good luck”, we’re going to invest into you. We’re going to invest into you and your game the best way we know how – by making sure the world remembers you.
How will the world remember my game?
Great question. It’s simple. We will choose 10 winners at the end of 8 months. The best 3 games will then have a video promotion built for them that will run on EVERY Best of Made with Unity video for the year of 2021. The winners will split each month, first place getting 2 slots and second and third place each getting 1 slot. With an expected 2.5 million views on Youtube expected in 2021, your game is going to get some serious publicity. Some serious stickiness. And hopefully, you will turn that into serious sales.
Ok, that does sound interesting. What are the rules?
The rules are simple. Build the game you have always wanted to build in 8 months. There is no theme. You decide what you want to create. There is no limit to scope. VR, AR, FPS, 3rd Person Adventure Game, RPG, Mobile – any of the above. This is your game that we will be promoting, so we want you to be in love with it.
Build it in Unity though. It makes no sense advertising it in Best of Made with Unity if your game is made using a different game engine. There are a few little rules we do have in place and these are sort of necessary:
- Game must be finished and published: We will play each game from start to finish, and so will your customers. If you have a choice between a short game or an incomplete game, make sure it’s short. As far as publishing goes, be sure to leave about 1 month if you are publishing to Steam. IOS and Android usually take a day. I doubt anyone will be publishing to PSN or XBOX due to the price tag, but we left it there just in case.
- Must be monetizable through either an initial sale price, ads, or DLC: No free games folks unless there is some way for you to make money. We won’t promote games with ads unless you plan on taking in sales and supporting yourself.
- Published to mass market channels: The big online game markets like Steam, IOS, Google Play, Itch.io, are where you want to publish. No personal websites or dropbox links. This game needs to be discoverable on a major online store.
- Built this year: You are free to pillage old games to make this one. Don’t enter a game you have worked on for years and are about to release. Keep this honorable and remember – we’ve been promoting indie games for quite some time. We will catch it.
Going in guns blazing like a Boss… I like your style my friend. If you’ve never built a game before, learn about our Pro membership by attending a special webinar at https://www.bigmarker.com/gamedevhq/How-to-Become-A-Game-Developer
Learn how to build the game by taking our courses and use our Filebase plugin to fill it with awesome content. There has never a better time to begin than now and we have students who started our courses and within 6 months, have built games that are simply amazing. If you have the time and the drive, you can win this competition.
Be sure to connect with everyone in the game dev community at gamedevhq.com/discord and make sure you record your progress and share it with us on twitter by uploading a video around 10 seconds in length with the #madewithunity. Hopefully, we can add it to our ongoing series so everyone can get excited about your upcoming release!
Have fun with this friends. To enter, simply enter in your information down below and we will check out your game!