SaltCON is hosting the Ion Game Design Competition again this year.
Follow this link for the entry form:
http://www.saltcon.com/html/compete.html
New for this year. The deadline for your summary game description is due Nov 30, 2010. Also, you don't have to be present at the Ion Award, although we strongly recommend it since companies like to get to business quickly if they like the game.
Other than that, submit and get your summary looked at by representatives from game companies like Out of the Box, Mayday, and FRED. The top games will be invited to the Ion Award. You are encouraged to present your game. If you can't make it to Salt Lake February 18, then the judges will play your game based on your rulebook.
See you in February,
Steve
Here are answers to many of your great questions.
You do receive a the score sheet from each judge that read your game summary. They rank different aspects of the summary and then put in comments. The judges are not paid. They read the summary sheets for the purpose of whittling down the top games for the actual competition. As such, many of the comments are short. The $10 handles administrative costs of organizing the games, judges, and facility for the actual Ion Award competition.
The top 6 games will be played by the judges at SaltCON 2011 on February 18th. The designers are there to explain the mechanics of the game first hand in case a rule is unclear. This has also been a good opportunity for the judges to provide first hand feedback about what they did and did not like about the game. Importantly, the Ion Award provides a designer nearly 1 hour of face to face time with six judges who make the decisions to pick up a game. Therefore, while you may be unable to present the game at SaltCON and one of us will read your rule book and explain the game, it is really in your best interest to attend if you can.
On that note, the game King's Vinyard from Mayday games was the 2008 SaltCON winner and is coming out this month, and FRED distribution (Eagle and Griffen games) has two other SaltCON finalist games in their pipeline. For a competition running for two years, we have facilitated 3 games under contract. The judges are very excited for this year.
The contest is open to everyone throughout the world. The entry fee is simply $10 US.
Please feel free to write me at
steve at saltcon dot com if questions come up before we get around to coming back to this site.
Good luck to everyone,
Steve