Everyone who worked on and submitted a game should be extremely proud of their accomplishment.  You guys did a hell of a job!

The Top 20 games (finalists) should get posted within the next 24 hours if all goes well.  We have the list and its a matter of getting the pages created and uploaded for everyone to see so stay tuned folks.  As with the warmup challenge, we have quite a diverse and international representation of talent.

We reserved the option to contact and bring finalists to Gamefest and I can clearly state now that we're not going to be doing that.  We knew judging would be time consuming and it has been.  I see in this thread that a few of you are agonizing over whether or not to attend Gamefest.  I suggest you decide whether or not it is worth attending based on the merits of the conference and what you hope to get out of it rather than just to hear the results of the contest.  If you win, you are a winner regardless of whether or not you are present.  If you are planning to attend Gamefest however, let us know via xna@microsoft.com.  We'd love to meet members of our community at the conference and there will be quite a few of us in attendance.

Once we post the finalists and if you are interested in attending Gamefest, contact me once again at xna@microsoft.com before registering.  I'll waive the conference registration fees for you guys.  Only members of the team that were submitted as part of your game will be waived. 

--dave

Maybe Dave is on vacation ?

To all XNA employee : there is one simple way to make it up for the community: video record as much as you can, especially the results announcement :D

We'll see what we can do...  I think you guys will be more than pleased with what we have in store for you.  I won't spill the beans as other folks will be blogging about it shortly. <g>

--dave

How exciting!

Dave Mitchell [Microsoft]:

 I think you guys will be more than pleased with what we have in store for you.  I won't spill the beans as other folks will be blogging about it shortly. <g>

--dave

Dave, thanks so much for the responses!  I'm looking forward to seeing the finalist list on the web site when you get it up.  And I'm even more looking forward to hearing about the other things you are hinting about.  :-)

Good luck to everyone.  Guess we'll finally know soon!

Tom

Yes, thanks a ton Dave for updating the community..    To all the participants, good luck sleeping tonight :D

At least I know the tension is only going to last another day.  Although if I'm a finalist then I'll have an extra set of anxiety until the 14th, but I can handle it :P

Thank you very much for getting back to us, Dave.

SageClock:

At least I know the tension is only going to last another day.  Although if I'm a finalist then I'll have an extra set of anxiety until the 14th, but I can handle it :P

Thank you very much for getting back to us, Dave.

*13th*  We're announcing the winners on Monday the 13th as part of the keynote at Gamefest.  So that's 24 less hours of agony right there for the 20 finalists! <g>

--dave

Thanks for the update Dave......

/hopes for a placement :)

And the tension mounts.... :)

and mounts.... :))

 

One last good luck to all of you!

JB..

 

Dave Mitchell [Microsoft]:

I see in this thread that a few of you are agonizing over whether or not to attend Gamefest.  I suggest you decide whether or not it is worth attending based on the merits of the conference and what you hope to get out of it rather than just to hear the results of the contest. 

Dave,

Please don't misunderstand us.  I'm sure all of us would be more than excited to attend the conference on it's merits alone. 

The thing is, for must of us this contest would have been the 'justification' ( to ourselves or people we share budgets with whom for some reason don't understand how important videogames are ) for dropping the kind of $$$ it would have taken to get there and back.

Also, is there by any chance that if our submission doesn't make the top 20 if we would be able to know how it scored anyways?

Thanks for the info,

- Matt D

Well, 24 hours have passed.. though I guess since it isn't 5/6 pm in the eastern us yet, it might still happen today. :) Really exciting, though I don't dare hope for much.

barkers crest:

Please don't misunderstand us.  I'm sure all of us would be more than excited to attend the conference on it's merits alone. 

The thing is, for must of us this contest would have been the 'justification' ( to ourselves or people we share budgets with whom for some reason don't understand how important videogames are ) for dropping the kind of $$$ it would have taken to get there and back.

Oh definitely.  I've been wanting to go to something like this for years, but I've never been able to afford it.  I still can't afford it, and don't know where I'd stay were I able to go, but would absolutely love to attend.

Well, 24 hours have passed.. though I guess since it isn't 5/6 pm in the eastern us yet, it might still happen today. :) Really exciting, though I don't dare hope for much.

Its up now.

--dave

Wow, there were a lot fewer surprises than I expected.  Maybe we saw a higher percentage of the games than I thought.  Dave, can you tell us how many entries were judged?

Congrats to all of the finalists!  The eight of those I've played definitely deserved to be there.

Tom

awww :( i didn't get in. it would be great to know the score anyway though.

i did a game called minepik based off the japanese tsunami game. apparently i hear it's doing really well under the name "picross" on the DS, but I did a verison in java 2 years ago when noone else had game-ized it and was working on minepik before i heard of picross.

ah well, you win some you lose some.

 

 

I must admit that it is very disappointing to see a lack of puzzle/casual games represented in the top 20.

mairsil:

I must admit that it is very disappointing to see a lack of puzzle/casual games represented in the top 20.

I'm not sure, but I think our game (Ragu) counts as a "casual" game, because it is instantly playable by anyone from the ages of .. I dunno, 3? :D Anyone that can hold a 360 controller and move one of the sticks. And it's completely void of violence, which is nice too. There's teamplay, but we sadly didn't have time to implement other types of game play styles, such as racing or coop.

I guess I should clarify that I meant to say that they are under-represented.

Awwww....  Bummer... Crashed and burned.

Didn't make it :o(

Lets hope we get some feedback on the scores.

Well done to all those that made the cut!

Yay! My ProximityHD game made it :P

I was kind of hoping there'd be more casual games on that list also, but I have a feeling there's not more on the list because there weren't that many entries that would fall under the casual games category.

Sorry to all those that didn't make it.  The competition in this contest was just brutal, and even some of the really good entries couldn't make the cut :(  The other game I worked on didn't make it either, and the two guys I worked with worked really hard and really tried to make an innovative game, but it didn't quite make it.  Well, hopefully they'll decide to release it to the public, so some others can still enjoy the game.

Here's to a really stressful 10 days.

my game made it too! yo ho kablammo!

So glad all the crew have been phoneing round a celebrating with drinks and stuff lol

Congrats to all!

super mega awesome hehe!

Except for Hurricane X Not one Real 3D environemnt Game with joint animated characters - Go HurricaneX you deserve to WIN against the rest of those you know what!

Not backing down the truth needs out - HurricaneX is the only decent entry left in the competition.

MajorCache:

Except for Hurricane X Not one Real 3D environemnt Game with joint animated characters - Go HurricaneX you deserve to WIN against the rest of those you know what!

Not backing down the truth needs out - HurricaneX is the only decent entry left in the competition.

Because graphics are what really makes a great game...