This contest is an outstanding opportunity for student and apprentice members in G.A.N.G., and is a great way to advance your game audio career and get noticed. So, get your creative juices flowing and submit your best material in the competition!
There are two specific categories in the competition: Music Composition and Sound Design. Music winners will be awarded iZotope’s Alloy 2 and Ozone 5 plugins, and SoundIron’s entire Olympus Choral Collection, and the Sound Design winners will be awarded SoundIron’s “Sick” and “Metal” collection, Sound Librarian’s Aviation Collection, The Recordist’s “Ultimate Destruction HD Pro SFX Library” and iZotope’s Trash2 and Iris!
Here is an outline of the dates:
Feb 28th – Submissions Accepted
March 4th – Submissions Closed
March 5th – Voting opens
March 13th – Voting Closes
March 28th – GANG Awards Winner’s Announced at GANG Awards (GDC in San Francisco)
CONTEST DETAILS
(Please read all details below carefully before submitting)
Music Composition
Compose an original 1 minute (60 second) loopable (i.e. seamless loop) musical piece for a new game. The game is called ‘Hillbilly Robot Mafia” where hillbillies have converted their farms to robot factories!! It’s a player versus player RTS, and as players overtake other hillbilly robot factories across the countryside, they wield greater influence over the local authorities on their way to COUNTY DOMINATION!This music will be used for the Player vs Player battle! The artwork is cartoony, and similar to art styles found on Cartoon Network (Regular Show, Adventure Time etc). That is your spec…GO!
Judging Guidelines
Composition quality: Including appropriate instrumentation, development of a simple theme, and a strong element of fun or possibly humor.
Production quality: including mixing, effective use of samples/live playing, and overall quality of work, not to mention sustainability of listening to the piece as loopable battle music.
Sound Design
Design a 60-120 second soundscape for the game ‘Hillbilly Robot Mafia”, with the following elements, IN THIS ORDER:
The scene is the top of a hillside, on the site of a farm that has been converted into a Robot Factory. There are 2 opposing sets of Robots, with hillbillies at the robot controls.
“MESSAGE POP UP (“You Have Chose to Enter Battle, Is this Correct?”)
“MESSAGE CONFIRM”
“CHOOSE BATTLE UNIT” (repeat 3 times, as player choose 3 identical units)
“MESSAGE POP UP (You Have Used All Available Units)”
“MESSAGE POP UP (Ready to Fight?”
“START GAME”
The robots begin to attack in RTS fashion (not turn based). We hear the attacks, the crunches, the shots, the saws, the wheels, the squeaks, the leftover farm animals (!?), the hillbillies and whatever else you may hear in such a scene…until one team loses.
“MESSAGE POP UP (“You Won!”)
“MESSAGE POP UP (“Would you like to harvest the parts, or incinerate the opponent?”)
“MESSAGE POP UP (“You Have Chose to Incinerate”)
Robots incinerate the area, including, probably, some opposing hillbillies.
“LEVEL UP!”
“CONGRATULATIONS YOU BURNT THE OPPOSITION”
Judging Guidelines
Creativity: Ability to create UI sounds that are fun, create excitement, have some humor and yet don’t seem overbearing or out of place. Appropriate soundscape/ambience is important as well.
Production quality: including quality of sounds, originality of sounds, establishing a clear difference between the UI sounds and the combat/ambience sounds, and showing ability to tell a story through sound design.
CONTEST RULES
(Please read carefully)
1. The contest begins today and submissions will be accepted on a DropBox link (coming soon) starting February 28th.
2. You must be a Student or Apprentice member to submit. (An apprentice member is one who has NOT received payment for services in the interactive entertainment industry as an audio professional.)
3. You must be a G.A.N.G. member to vote or to participate.
4. You may submit only one work per category.
5. All submissions may not exceed the time limit listed in the description. Submissions may be less but not over the time listed. Any submissions exceeding the time limit will be rejected.
6. All submissions must be in mp3 format at 192 kbps compression. Submissions will not be accepted in any other format. Please do not compress the file via zip, .sit, etc.
7. All submissions must be uploaded no later than February 28th, at 11:59 PM PST.
VOTING GUIDELINES
1. Voting for the Student/Apprentice Contest will be open to all G.A.N.G. members starting March 5th, 2013.
2. All members may vote once for the composition category and once for the sound design category. All contestants may vote and are encouraged to vote for their own work.
3. Please take the time to listen to all of the submissions in each category before choosing the submission you feel is the best. Judging guidelines are written in each category to help you make an objective decision.
The winners will be announced at the Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards held at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Contestants do not need to be in attendance to win.
Good luck!
Brian, Alex, and Dren
Game Audio Network Guild