Ever dream of playing a brand new indie game based onJaws,Back to the Future, or some of your other favorite Universal properties? Well that day may not be very far away thanks to a new indie game pitch contest being run for the movie studio. The upcoming contest offers development teams the chance to pitch game designs for a number of popular properties for a chance to secure a serious backing paycheck.
The competition isbeing run by Unity, in partnership with NBC and Universal. Game development teams have the opportunity to pitch a new game concept based on one of five Universal-owned IPs:Back To The Future, Battlestar Galactica, Jaws, DreamWorksVoltron Legendary DefenderandTurok.
The contest winner will take home $250,000 cash and a consulting contract with Universal.
Chris Heatherly, executive vice president of games and digital platforms at Universal explained part of the reason for taking this approach to the development of new games…
“This is a new way for us to find developers that maybe wouldn’t have been on our radar previously and see what they are capable of. We have developers approach us all the time with ideas for our IP but this is a much more organized way of doing it.
“And it takes a lot of the friction out of the process for everyone - so we don’t have to do a bunch of contracts and negotiations upfront and can just focus on whether there is a compelling idea. The proof with games is in the pudding so this skips the ‘talking’ stage and gets us right into the ‘show it’ stage where good developers shine the best.”
We’ll post updated when the contest narrows down to the six finalists and, eventually, when the winner is confirmed. Stay tuned.
