Microsoft has brought its game development competition back to life. Dream.Build.Play used to be the annual gaming competition of Microsoft that happened last in 2012. The company has announced that it"s going to hold the competition this year and has opened the registrations for all game developers.
This year"s contest is going to be the biggest one in terms of cash prizes. Contestants can win over $200,000 cash in prizes across a number of different categories. This competition is open to all game developers, working solo or in a team of up to seven persons. The participants will be required to create Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games using Microsoft technologies for any of the four announced categories. The detail of each category is as follows:
Cloud-powered game
- Grand Prize: $100,000 USD
Build a game that uses Azure Cloud Services on the backend, like Service Fabric, CosmosDB, containers, VMs, storage, and Analytics. Judges will give higher scores to games that use multiple services in creative ways-and will award bonus points for Mixer integration.
PC game
Grand Prize: $50,000 USD
Create a Windows 10 game using whatever technology you prefer—even middleware like Unity, Cocos, and GameMaker—and publish it to the Windows Store. Using Windows 10 features like Cortana or Inking will give your game an advantage with the judges.
Mixed reality game
Grand Prize: $50,000 USD
Create an immersive mixed reality experience that lets players interact with 3D volumetric content in a virtual space. Use whichever tools you prefer (like Unity) to build as long as your game uses Windows Mixed Reality. Judges will prefer games that incorporate audio content.
Console game
Grand Prize: $25,000 USD
Build a UWP game for the Xbox One console family and incorporate the Xbox Live Creators Program with at least Xbox Live presence. Extra consideration will be given to games that incorporate Xbox Live services like leaderboards and statistics.
Interested game developers can register now and can start submitting their games from 2nd August till 31st December. Judging will begin on 2nd January 2018 and the winners will be announced on 20th March 2018. Interested folks can check out the source link given below for further details.
Source and Image: Microsoft