Dream-Build-Play 2010 joined by Old Spice

Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play Challenge is coming early this year…and it’s joined by a second contest as well.

The Standard Challenge is the same as previous challenges. Register before January 18th and submit your game between Jan 19th & March 3rd of 2010. Games will be judged by a panel of judges based on Fun factor (40%), Innovation (30%), and Production Quality (30%). There are 4 prizes – Grand Prize ($40k), 1st place ($20k), 2nd place ($10k), and 3rd place ($5k) with the winners announced in March.

The second challenge is the Microsoft Old Spice Challenge. Basically, you make a game utilizing and advertising some new scents from Old Spice (Matterhorn, Fiji, Denali, and Cyprus). Same deadlines as the standard challenge. Games will first be judged by a panel of judges based on Branding Integration (50%), Fun Factor (25%), and Production Quality (25%). 5 finalists will be chosen. The games by those finalists will be placed on the XBox Live Marketplace Dash for about 3 weeks in April for public voting. The entry with the highest votes will win the Grand Prize of $60k. The other 4 finalists get nothing.

You can enter both contests if you want and use the same game for both if appropriate.

I’m rather excited at the chance of actually submitting an entry to one of these contest this year. I just finished Molly the Were-Zompire and was starting work on my next game so this should help give me an extra incentive to work hard on it.