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Unreal Mod contest first round winners announced
by Jolex Del Pilar
Friday, December 19, 2003
Each winner will take home $50,000.
Epic Games and Digital Extremes, co-creators of the Unreal game franchise, along with NVIDIA Corporation, Atari, AMD, and Alia® today announced the first-round winners of the “$1,000,000 NVIDIA Make Something Unreal” mod-making contest (http://www.makesomethingunreal.com). More than 400 aspiring 3D artists and game developers from around the world entered game and entertainment mods (a new game or add-on created with tools from the original title) into the contest. Mods were entered in various categories, such as “Best Mod,” “Best Level with Original Content,” “Best Level,” “Best Mutator,” “Best Model,” “Best Tool,” “Best Voice Pack or Audio Modification,” and “Best Game Type.” The winners of the first-of-four contest rounds take home a share of $50,000 in cash and high-end PC equipment. The contest is one year long and set to conclude in the fall of 2004.
“The first-round finalists and winners developed some phenomenal mods,” said Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games. “We have been so impressed with the entries received that we’ve decided to extend the contest by adding a fourth phase and additional prize money.”
Winners were selected by an expert panel of judges comprised of programmers, artists and designers from the sponsoring companies. First-round winning mods demonstrated great originality and technical expertise in all the categories. The first-round winners in the “Best Mod” category made significant changes to the Unreal Tournament 2003 gameplay by creatingnew game experiences. The winning mods include Deathball (the first place winner), which is a futuristic soccer/lacrosse/football-like sport, and fourth-place winner Jupiter Effect: Influx, which was created as an art school project and is an anime inspired battle between giant robots. In the “Best Game Type” category, winners created a new type of gameplay with the mod Riftwar, which incorporates three teams within the structure of the existing Unreal Tournament 2003 game. Created by a young man currently serving in the German military, the “Best Original Level” is Aristocracy, a mod with deathmatch gameplay set in an old European fantasy village map.
The winning mods can be viewed and downloaded today at
http://www.unrealtournament.com/ut2003/contest_winners.php. Additionally, NVIDIA will have each of the winning mods on display at their booth during the Cyberathlete Professional League(CPL) Winter Championship event taking place this week in Dallas, Texas.
--- Jolex Del Pilar |
