Get Ready For The Second Great Canadian Appathon
Mobile game developer XMG Studio and the National Post are calling all Canadian college and university students to bring their game-ideas to life at Great Canadian Appathon2. Over the weekend of September 30 “HUBS”, where students can gather, will be set up at over 20 participating colleges and universities, across the country, to give student game developers and designers the chance to work around the clock and compete for $50,000 in prize money.
Similar to the Great Canadian Appathon, the largest ‘hackathon’ to be held in Canada, GCA2 guarantees participants 48 hours of intense fun, meeting new people, learning stuff, and building a game on top of the world’s leading mobile API’s. Some of the talented designers and developers from XMG will be on-site at the major universities’ “HUBS” to motivate and mentor the teams. All other coders can rely on a 48-hour support line for questions and advice on how to work with the latest interfaces.
“In addition to the street cred for winning the GCA2, we’re also awarding the front-runners with some serious, cold hard cash,” says Ray Sharma, founder and CEO of XMG Studio. “The team pumping out the best mobile game wins $25,000 and Unity Pro 3.x licenses for each of its members. We’ll also invite them for job interviews at our office in Toronto and work with them to polish their game and get it ready for publication in an App Store.”
The team whose game takes second place will be awarded $10,000, and another 10 winners will each be awarded with $1,000 for a variety of category prizes including “Best Windows Phone 7 Game” sponsored by Microsoft, “Best Technical Game Play” sponsored by Telus and “Best Power & Performance Game” sponsored by NOS Energy Drinks.
“The Great Canadian Appathon is a celebration of our country’s competitive spirit. You have to be extremely driven and dedicated to spend an entire weekend in virtual lock down building an app from scratch,” says Douglas Kelly, Publisher, National Post. “We will have journalists covering all facets of this compelling challenge for nationalpost.com so that we ensure our young entrepreneurs get the coverage they deserve.”
The GCA2 will start at 5:00 p.m. (local time) on September 30, 2011 and continue for 48 hours, ending at 5:00 p.m. on October 2, 2011. Following the event, the winning games will be evaluated on criteria such as the degree of innovation, the fun and entertainment factor, the level of art and design polish as well as stability. The three finalists will be honored on November 2 in Toronto at the “Grand Finale” event, sponsored by KPMG, and will compete live in front of the panel of judges for the ‘game-changing’ grand prize of $25,000.00.
More information about the event including supported platforms, team registrations, rules and regulations, campuses already signed-on or information on how to get your campus involved can be found online or follow GCAppathon on Twitter.
