February 15, 2006
Indie Games Go Dramatic: “Façade” Wins Grand Jury Award at 2006 Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition
Interactive Drama from Upstart Developer, Procedural Arts, Takes Home “Sparky” Award Plus Prizes
PORTLAND, Oregon, February 15, 2006 — The 2006 Guerilla Gamemaker Competition presentation of its five major prizes culminated by honoring independent developer Procedural Arts’ title Façade with the Grand Jury “Sparky” Award at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Hailed by veteran game designer Chris Crawford as “the best actual working interactive storyworld yet created”, Façade offers an unprecedented level of interpersonal interactivity never before seen in interactive entertainment, breaking through to the movie-and-theater-going public typically uninterested in the standard fare of contemporary action and strategy games.
In this sophisticated interactive story, the player is transported to the apartment of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. Assuming the role of an old friend to the couple, the player must navigate an evening get-together that begins pleasantly but quickly turns ugly, becoming entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are made. By the end of this intense one-act interactive play, the player will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating the player to re-play the drama to find out how their interaction could make things turn out differently.
“It is an honor to be presented with the Grand Jury Prize,” commented Andrew Stern, co-founder of Procedural Arts. “That the Jury chose to recognize Façade, an ambitious attempt to innovate a new genre of interactive entertainment, suggests that players are truly looking for something new.”
The Grand Jury Award was presented to the Procedural Arts team following several days of presentations and open play by the twelve finalists to both a jury of video game industry experts and festival attendees. Voting concluded on January 24th and the Procedural Arts team was presented with their award that evening at the Guerilla Gamemaker Award Ceremony.
“Façade’s focus on realistic and gripping interpersonal interactivity make it a very unique game experience,” said Sam Robert of Slamdance. “There’s not been a game like this before and it really seemed to connect with the audience.”
About The Guerilla Gamemaker Competition
Started in 2005 as an expansion of the Slamdance Film Festival, the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition (GGC) is dedicated to emerging games artists and their visions. The GGC is focused on developing a thriving scene for independently developed commercial and art games. Slamdance games and gamemakers have received distribution deals, design deals, and accolades from other games festivals around the world. Slamdance 2005 Jury Award winning game “Revolved” received a distribution deal from Gametrust. Filmmaker Dan Mirvish recently penned a deal with the creators of the 2006 GGC winning “Rumble Box” to design a game to promote his recent film “Open House.”
About Procedural Arts
Procedural Arts LLC is focused on creating highly interactive, emotional, personality-rich characters and stories. Their authoring system, the Procedural Arts Behavior Library, available for licensing for entertainment, training, and marketing applications, includes technologies for lifelike character behavior, robust natural language understanding, conversation management, and drama management. Co-founders Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern combine the best of academic Artificial Intelligence research applied to characters and stories with a decade of industry experience creating award-winning interactive entertainment products selling millions worldwide. To learn more about Procedural Arts, and to freely download the interactive drama Façade (available for Windows and soon for Macintosh), visit www.proceduralarts.com.
Contact:
info -at- proceduralarts -dot- com