Winners Announced at Independent Games Festival

Posted on March 28, 2002

The 4th Annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) announced top honors during the awards ceremony at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. The $15,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Independent Game of the Year was awarded to the development team, DreamingMedia, for Bad Milk, a hallucinatory puzzle game using live action video.

The IGF Winners

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Bad Milk by DreamingMedia

Innovation in Game Design
Insaniquarium by Flying Bear Entertainment

Innovation in Visual Arts
Banja Taiyo by Team cHmAn

Innovation in Audio
Bad Milk by DreamingMedia

Technical Excellence
Ace of Angels by Flying Rock Enterprises

Audience Award
Kung Fu Chess by Shizmoo

All winners also received development tools from Microsoft's DirectX team, the Technical Excellence winner received a Pentium 4 workstation from Intel, and the Innovation In Game Design winner received Playstation 2 Linux Development Kits. A cash prize of $1,000 was awarded to each craft and audience award recipient.

"The 2002 IGF honorees exemplify the 'outside-the-box' thinking which keeps innovation at the forefront of video game development," said Alex Dunne, chairman of the IGF. "Each year the festival judging becomes more difficult as indie developers continue to create and submit games that push the envelope."

The IGF was established in 1998 to encourage and reward innovation in independent games and to provide a forum for independent game developers to exhibit their work, receive recognition and meet with commercial publishers.