GCG’s Design Challenges Tackle Marketing and Art

Two new Game Design Challenges, recently posted on sister site GameCareerGuide.com, have turned their focus toward aspects of the game industry other than design: marketing and art. One of the challenges, with a submission deadline of midnight Dec. 31, is to come up with a three-stage marketing campaign for a fictional game called Eco-Racing Wars. The second, art-focused challenge, is to design a costume or costumes for LittleBigPlanet’s Sackboy, to be sold to players. While artwork is encouraged, it’s not required, and entrants are welcome to describe their ideas in text if they so choose. The Game Design Challenge is a weekly series of interactive contests on GameCareerGuide.com, with the purpose of helping game development students and other people aspiring to the profession, stretch the bounds of how they think about video games. The goal is not so much to challenge game design itself as to challenge the readers to refocus their view of games, moving away from a purely consumer or player angle to one that considers different development aspects, too. Professional developers are welcomed and encouraged to participate in the challenges as well (most can be completed in a reasonably short amount of time). Professionals are always welcomed on the site’s forum, where community members often works out their approach to challenge solutions. Registration for the forum is free. Manveer Heir, a game designer at Raven Software, and the staff of GameCareerGuide develop and judge each challenge. For more information about GameCareerGuide.com and more on the basics of the video game development industry, see the site’s Getting Started section.