Activision Announces Indie Game Competition Winners

Two indie game developers are going to split $250,000 of Activision’s money.

Activision has announced the winners of this year’s Independent Games Competition, an awards program designed to foster innovation in the industry. Despite the name of the competition, it wasn’t actually Activision who picked the winners but IndieCade, a site dedicated to the support of the independent game development community.

The big winner is Iron Dragon, “an action flight adventure optimized for touch-screen devices,” which earned developer Christopher Hui a cool $175,000. Second prize, and a still-cool $75,000, goes to Michael Stanton for Planet Smashers, a class-based 2D multiplayer shooter that unfolds across the surface of low-gravity moons.

“We were excited with the quality, creativity and diversity we saw in the submissions we received for the Games Competition,” said Activision Vice-President of External Development Dan Winters. “The energy and enthusiasm of the indie community continues to inspire us and we’re thrilled to help make their dreams become reality.”

The idea of Activision dabbling in the affairs of the indie world might not sit well with everyone, but aside from the buckets of money, there’s absolutely no connection between the publisher and either of these games. In fact, Activision made a point of noting that both developers will “retain full intellectual property rights to their works.” You can’t even get a very good look at either of them at this point; the Planet Smashers design doc and competition pitch are up at stuff.drmikey.com but of Iron Dragon, there is nary a trace.