Los Angeles - Acclaim Games presents a $1 million game development competition for the “Top Secret” Project, directed by game director David Perry. Teams of indie, mod, professional, amateur, and student game developers can enter to develop a real MMO game, win an industry-standard development deal, and earn royalties on the title.
Teams will manage their projects and resources at ModCenter (http://www.modcenter.com), a developer site recently launched by IGN Entertainment. ModCenter will provide free tools for the teams participating in the “Top Secret” $1 million game development competition.
The total prize package is worth up to $1 million, plus royalties, to the winning development team. As part of this cash prize, Acclaim will pay the licensing fees for any commercially available video game engine in the world, thereby removing one of the biggest obstacles preventing many talented developers from releasing professional products.
The basic core of the game has already been designed and is a ground-breaking new kind of beast racing game that doesn’t stop at racing alone. The “Top Secret” design includes the ability to breed and collect beasts, fight in player-versus-player battles, and explore an expanding world.
IGN’s ModCenter will provide online project management and tracking tools for all “Top Secret” development teams for free. Teams will manage their projects at www.modcenter.com where they can organize tasks, track bugs, store source code, and communicate with team members. It also allows teams to become “virtual,” meaning that individuals around the world can join together to form new virtual teams and still work on the same project.
ModCenter was built by IGN around the SourceForge toolset by CollabNet (http://www.collab.net) and is free to use. ModCenter is aimed specifically at modification and independent game development. The new site provides project management utilities, industry educational resources, and promotional services to the development community. Utilities include a bug-tracking system, project discussion forums, source code repositories, a wiki system, document storage, and an internal file release system, all controlled via a project administration area.
The competition is open to any developer worldwide who is technically qualified to create the game. It will be published by Acclaim.
Users can sign up to participate in the “Top Secret” Project for free by visiting http://topsecret.acclaim.com.