Letter From The IGF Chairman: Welcome To IGF 2015

[As the Independent Games Festival opens for the 17th year, longstanding Chairman Brandon Boyer explains the rules and expectations for this year's much-awaited indie game showcase.] Hi everyone, and welcome again to the 2015 Independent Games Festival, our 17th annual ceremony celebrating the best in independent games. As you read this post, we will have just begun accepting submissions for this year's festival, which will remain open until Wednesday, October 22nd for our Main Competition, and October 31st for our Student Competition. As usual, the festival will culminate with our awards show on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015, during Game Developers Conference 2015, located at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Typically, this is the bit of this blog post where I outline our changes to the festival, but after a few years of larger outward-facing policy shifts, this year we're holding steady with the same rules as 2014, and continuing to focus our enhancements on the backend that our entrants, judges and juries use, to make it easier than ever to submit, discover and rate the games we receive. Interested in being a judge in IGF 2015? With that said, we would like to extend the same invitation as we did late last year and open a call for new judges via this application form. We're always looking for more diverse voices to make up our judging body for both the Main and Student competition, and this form is your way of expressing your interest. If you are involved in the games industry in any capacity and are not submitting a game to this year's festival, feel free to express your interest in becoming a judge by filling out this form. Please note that we can't guarantee all applications will be accepted -- if you've been selected, you'll receive an email from us when our judging process has begun. Now that submissions are officially open for IGF 2015, you can refer to our official rules for both the Main and Student Competitions in much greater detail. If you have any questions about any of the detailed changes above, please don't hesitate to drop us an email at [email protected] to discuss this further. Hope you're all having a great year, and we're all looking forward to seeing what you're all preparing for this year's Festival!