After the Rush

The IGF and GDC have come and gone in a giddy and exhausting flash. What a week!

While none of the three initial IGF nominations for Osmos came through, our “late horse” — the Direct2Drive Vision Award, whose finalists were announced less than a week before the awards ceremony — came in! We’re really honoured to have received it, and it will certainly help our budding studio find its legs. We went out for a celebratory dinner with the D2D folks afterwards, and heard about their (amazingly thorough) internal judging process, and their plans to get more involved with the indie community. It’s the first year they’ve given out this award, and it seems they were (almost?) as nervous giving it out as we were during the awards ceremony.

So that was awesome news — but the week held much more for us as well. We got to meet indies we’ve respected over the years, as well as talented new ones you’ve probably already started to hear about: amazing people and new friends. We attended a number of really useful and entertaining IGS talks. (If you didn’t attend, check out the slides from Ron Carmel’s talk — essential reading for any developer looking to go independent.) And finally, we spent three days in the IGF area of the expo floor: soaking up the incredible density of talent and game-awesomeness; showing Osmos to students and publishers alike; getting tons of great feedback, support and suggestions from so many people; and just generally absorbing the warm, fuzzy and exhausting rush…

…and we thought we were tired going into the week! Andy and I began referring to the intensity and lack of sleep as our “zombification” process. The good news is that we’re now ready for the zombie-apocalypse, if and when it comes.

One last comment before I slip away into sweet recovery-sleep. Congratulations to all the IGF winners, of course — but congratulations to all the finalists as well. There are some great games and developers out there that deserve your attention just as much. In fact, I was surprised that Night Game, Dyson and Retro/Grade didn’t walk away with awards. Maybe at IndieCade, PAX 10, or next year’s IGF…

Later, amigos.