Recent grads win biggest independent game competition in world

on Tuesday,March 15,2011 18:03

Two years ago, when the development team for Inertia was studying degrees at Southern Methodist University, winning a $100,000 check in Las Vegas must have seemed like a far cry. However, the students recently just had that experience after the Indie Game Challenge, which is the biggest independent game competition in the world, according to DePauw University.

The game is simple but addictive. The astronaut hero leaps through maze-like levels and avoids obstacles throughout his journey. The difference is that gravity is included - the protagonist can control it at will. This allows for complicated twists, bounces and loops that made Inerta stand out from the thousands of other competitors.

"[Coming up with] the idea for Inertia was a slow process," Evan M. Skarin told the news source. "We only had a couple weeks to come up with the concept, and I can remember sitting in a design meeting two days before our deadline without a set game."

Almost every member of the development team was immediately sent job offers after winning the contest.

The video game industry is growing, which means that there may be an increasing demand for skilled designers. In 2008, there were 514,800 computer software engineers and 394,800 computer systems software engineers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.