14 DAY TRIAL // The second edition of Epic's community-oriented contest "Make Something Unreal" is upon us. Epic has revived the contest, which first took place in 2005, and is making a very tempting offer. The winner or winners are going to get an Unreal 3 license for free and the chance to develop a game built around it with some help from Epic Games.
The main sponsor this time around is Intel and there are more prizes than the above-mentioned license. Intel software development products, Velocity Micro PCs and smaller cash prizes are up for grabs. All you need to do is have a working knowledge of the Unreal 3 engine and some modding skills. Would-be computer games developers need to create and submit to Epic a mod for the PC version of Unreal Tournament 3 that changes something in the environments, weapons, gameplay, tools or vehicles category.
It's probably safe to say that total conversion mods have the best chances at winning the challenge. Preliminary judging will begin in June 2008 and after four preliminary phases the final is scheduled for late 2009.
When in 2005 Nvidia sponsored the same competition, Epic thought that the vehicle-oriented mod called Red Orchestra was the best of the bunch. It tells the story of the Soviet front of WW II from the point of view of the Russians and is built around the Unreal engine. Currently it's available from Steam.
Mark Rein, who is Epic vice president, stated: "Unreal Engine 3 is used by many of the industry's leading game companies, so this is truly a chance to prove your worth and get your foot in the door of the game business while having your work potentially exposed to millions. To get mod-makers started, the collector's edition of Unreal Tournament 3 includes over 20 hours of 3D Buzz's professional-level video training materials for the Unreal Engine 3 toolset."
The competition is a clear sign that the industry wants to tap into the talent and innovation reserves of the gaming community, seeking to take the best ideas coming from gamers and give them the chance to develop into interesting games. Such competitions are due to become more common, especially after the success of Portal, which initially was also a community project turned GOTY winning game.