The following are the rules for participating in Swedish Game Awards 2012.
§1 General
§1.1 Swedish Game Awards (SGA) reserves the right to decide whether an entry may compete or not.
§1.2 Entries and participants may not be associated with, or sponsored by, a company in the games or entertainment industry. An entry that violates this rule will be disqualified. However, it is allowed to start a company associated with the entry. The rationale behind this rule is that this is to be kept a student oriented competition.
§1.3 The entry must not have been published by a publisher. Releasing the game independently is allowed.
§1.4 A playable demo – not necessarily a completed game – must be submitted by each team at the end of the competition. This submission is referred to as the final entry. Additionally, each team is required to submit at least three (3) in-game screenshots and a 200 word description of the game. In previous years jurys have stated that the graphics themselves are not very important, but should be polished. One example of this might be using a well defined graphical style rather than using cutting-edge shaders. A trailer is recommended but not mandatory.
§1.5 A competing team owns all the rights to its entry. SGA will not distribute the final game without the team’s consent. However, SGA reserves the right to use the game trailer and screenshots, for publicity purposes.
§1.6 Award nominees and winners are selected by the competition’s jury, and its decision cannot be appealed.
§1.7 If a team plans an ambitious entry that does not completely follow the rules above they may contact SGA with a rules exception request. More specific demands that affect the final entry may be announced during the course of the competition.
§1.8 Teams may submit multiple game entries. This also means individuals may participate in multiple teams and entries during the same competition run.
§2 Technology
§2.1 Entries must run on one of the following operating systems: Windows 7, Linux (latest stable build of Ubuntu) or OS X (as a Universal binary). Emulators are permitted. The entries may use special hardware such as gamepads or home made input devices, but they must provided to SGA prior to jury weekend in order for the jury to be able to do their job. They will be returned shortly after.
$2.2 Entries targeting the mobile platform must be run on one of the following platforms: Windows Phone, Iphone/Ipad or Android. The entry must be a native application. SDK emulators are also allowed.
§2.3 Entries are allowed to use existing technology (such as libraries, game engines, game makers, etc.) and existing media (such as images, 3D models, sound effects, etc.) However, teams must have the right to use the technology, media and trademarks, as well as the right to submit the final entry to SGA for judgement, i.e. respect copyrights and any applicable license agreements. The jury will take the amount of self-produced content into consideration when judging submissions. This also means that modifications of existing games (“mods”) are allowed.
§3 Participants
§3.1 SGA aims to promote game development within the educational system of Sweden. Therefore at least half of the participants in each team must be students at a Swedish educational program and participate actively in the development of the entry.
§3.2 The entry may (and should) be tested by people outside of the participating team. However, the testers involvement may not go further than providing comments for the improvement of the entry. If further involvement is necessary the third party should be added to the team.
§3.3 The participating team may add or remove participants during the course of the competition. However, workarounds for rule 3.2 are not allowed by simply allowing the third party to join and then be excluded once the involvement is no longer required. If a third party joins we prefer that he/she stays with the project. We encourage fair play in letting him/her take part to the end of the competition.
The best of luck to you all from us at SGA. Have fun!
