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BioWare Holds World Design Contest
grayblob writes "BioWare is holding a World Design Contest to find talented level designers to work in Austin on their first MMORPG. To enter you must create a module with a 20-40 minute playtime in the NWN1 toolset. The module should include 'a cut scene, intricate puzzles and interesting NPC behavior.' The contest ends July 20 and like the writing contest doesn't guarantee employment for the winners."
Good way to get new ideas. Wasn't there a band that held a similar contest to find a new guitarist and just copied all the good riffs they heard on the day?
Who retains copyright over submitted works? No mention of it in the agreement.
I like this bit:
VGH Austin is under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to:
(a) acknowledge receipt of the Materials and/or this Agreement;
So you have to sign an agreement which they can deny ever receiving. Nice.
As one of the so called 'inexperied young hacks' that was hired about 4 years ago by BioWare, I'd like to offer a few observations on the topic.
- The community member to hire ratio is more like 10-12 out 2.000.000 active members or so, which is slightly better than 1 out of 1.000.000.
- None of out projects has yet gone 'flounders' and no development team has ever been laid off at BioWare. In fact, there have never been lay offs as a result of a project ending or due to 'operational circumstances' at BioWare.
- The 'young, inexperienced hacks' you're talking about have mostly worked in other high tech industries before coming to BioWare to do more interesting, rewarding work. Most taken a paycut for moving into this industry - in return for higher job satisfaction and a great work environment.
- That said, I'm paid a competitive salary and I wouldn't trade my job for a job paying twice as high in vanilla IT anytime soon.
The benefits of going this route for us are:
- We get applications from people that have a background with Bioware games and understand what our games are about.
- We get people from outside the industry to think about applying. Especially making an MMO, it is important to have people who have an outside view on things instead of having been shaped by the 'establishment'.
- We get people really interested in the job, not burned out people looking for another quick assignment.
As mentioned in the article, we ran a contest for a writer position a while back and hired a great writer as a result - from outside the industry.
Bunch of reasons.
:) )
Some of them
- NWN is a very mature, very stable game development platform.
- Everyone at BioWare has NWN installed on their machines. Makes it easier to review.
- It has more copies out there (3.x M+)
- It has much lower systems requirements.
- It is cheaper (15 USD vs 49 USD for NWN2)
- The people reviewing the modules are much more familiar with the NWN toolset.
- It encourages people to stick to gameplay over eyecandy.
- Faster to create a NWN module. NWN2 levels are much more complex (and better looking
- The NWN toolset is more friendly (less complex) to beginners
- The documentation for NWN is much more complete after 5 years.
hope that helps
Georg, BioWare.
It's just a contest. You're free to decide whether it's worth it or not. You're also free to decide whether the terms are fair or not.
Camping on quad since 1996.
What if they don't really want a cut sceene, but want builders to demonstrate their ability to create scripted events in the NWN toolset?
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