Greetings to all crime fighting Flash game developers! MochiAds and Warner Bros. have teamed up to bring you a fresh new promotion that has never been done before on Mochi! This is an open casting call for all you top Flash developers out there to submit your awesome game ideas for a chance to create an officially licensed game starring none other than Batman himself!
Out of all the submissions, we will select our favorites. Those selected developers will then go on to create these games with, for the first time, official Batman assets provided by Warner Bros. and a chance to win one of many cash prizes!
DEADLINE
Game idea submissions for this promotion are to be submitted by 3/27/2009 11:59PM PST! Hurry and get those game ideas submitted for the Batman: The Brave and The Bold Casting Call!
PRIZE BREAKDOWN
- Grand Prize – $9,000 + Contract to create another game for $15,000
- WB Choice Award – Four winners receiving $5,000 each
- WB Appreciation Award – Five winners receiving $4,000 each
RULES
Phase 1 (3/11/2009 – 3/27/2009)
Submit a game idea that describes your idea for the perfect Batman: The Brave and the Bold game! The submission form asks for items like “game description” and links to “game mockups”. The more comprehensive and detailed these pieces are, the better idea we will have on the game you plan on creating and can then judge accordingly.
Phase 2 (4/10/2009 – 7/2/2009)
Finalists from the casting call are announced and invited to start development on their game! Official Batman assets passed out to finalists participating in the game creation!
Phase 3 (7/3/2009)
Winners announced!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please set your sights on the official Batman: The Brave and the Bold Casting Call page at www.braveandtheboldcastingcall.com for all the promotion information and submission form!
This is great news. It’s good to see Warner Bros. is working with flash game developers, instead of just outsourcing to a big development team.
I’m expecting to see some great games come out of this contest. Great job on securing this for the Mochi community.
Is this competition open to people in the UK? because all this stuff “inners may, at the option of the Sponsor, be required to complete and sign an Affidavit of Eligibility and Liability Release, where legal, a Publicity Release, and IRS Form W-9.”
doesn’t apply to me…
and what’s the deadlines etc for this? as it says developers will be chosen in early march?!?
regarding the assets, do these have to be used? it seems a bit odd because to create assets as good as those will require a very good graphics illustrator, so most people will just use those meaning most games will be the same..(ie side on platform game)
I could use that cash.
“All accepted submissions become the property of Warner Bros.”
YAY a chance to lose ownership of work without getting paid. How web 2.0 :)
Top tip. Include clear objectives and statements about ownership and what and who and where or developers who are used to getting screwed will just assume the worst. Mkay?
wow, those game graphics look like crap.
looks like the kinda graphics one of those companies like cartoon network or fox kids would use back in the 90’s for their websites crappy flash5 and shockwave games.
@kriss: All accepted submissions, meaning if you’re not one of the 20 accepted submissions, your idea does not become property of Warner Bros.
@flashgamemaker: Thanks for the heads up. I provided the correct dates on the main site.
Darn… Do they accept developers from outside the USA? I clicked on “Enter” but didn’t see a Country field so I am inclined to assume this is only for developers in the USA.
Also, to enter… Do I need to submit a completed game or what? What are the mockups they ask about? Game demos? Concept art? Anything?
Thanks!
yeah exactly, do they accept games from developers outside the USA or not? like i said before a lot of the stuff they mention does not apply to people outside the UK.
*EDIT* outside the USA i mean.
Yes, the contest is open to residents outside of the USA. I will make those updates to the contest page.
9 grand to make a game… good luck with that. I guess Cartoon Network is getting desperate. The budgets for these games are usually between 45 and 100K, plus whatever they are spending internally for their own producers/creatives. But good luck everyone :)
This doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me. Based on the example mockups, I’d say that these games are in the $15K – $25K range, assuming that they were being pitched by a developer with a proven track record of work-for-hire games for licensed properties. Since the whole idea of this contest is to get an amateur developer’s foot in the door, $9K isn’t terrible. It might not sound good to someone who is already getting $15K+ for these kind of projects, but those developers aren’t entering contests to win clients!
I really don’t think WB/Mochi are expecting to get submissions that are worth more than the $15K they might pay an outside vendor. If someone does bust their ass and do an incredible job, then everybody wins. The developer got their foot in the door and they’ve demonstrated that they can be entrusted with bigger budgets and regular contracts. This is very normal for vendors of any kind.
Developer Dan, I think your numbers are high. I believe most games in this category cost from $15K upto $40K, but the example mockups really skew to the lower end of that margin. Games above $50K are really an exception.
If it says somewhere what kind of depth they are looking for, I missed it, though. My estimations are based solely on their example mockups.
I think that’s good for WB to get some great games from independent/amateur flash game developer (who still doesn’t care too much about ownership).. it will be a good portfolio for them.
Will we be expected to use a similar graphic style to that of the show? Do we have to use their assets?
Holy Flash game contest, Batman!
I have a question regarding the mockups: Emanuele Feronato says in his blog that we have to use the provided assets, however, they are not downloadable? I guess we aren’t meant to decompile the swf?
@Austin: Thanks for the comment. I was going to post similar numbers form my experiences with 3rd party developers given the scope of this project.
@Axcho: You are expected to use the same style as the promotion is tightly connected to that particular Batman show.
@Machtundnebel: Feel free to just do screen captures for mockups. Since they’re screenshots anyway, we can use our imaginations to get an idea of what you are proposing.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. I think I’ll pass on this one.
So does this mean that we have to use the assets provided? Or does it mean that the visuals should be in that style? Either way, it seems like the game has almost been designed already and that WB just need someone to fill in the gaps, in which case is it worth submitting a design which isn’t side-scrolling and also using a more mature look?
Cheers,
Mike.
@Alexander: Ok, thanks!
Quick question, since the game description area is limited to 300 characters. Would it be out of line to link to a full proposal or pitch ?
Thank you
I had a question, actually, a few. 1 is, what is a game mockup? And in the “Portfolio of Past Games”, what do I put in here. Do I just make a screenshot of what I want the game to look like? Everthing else is pretty straightfoward.
Thanks
@Jose: Feel free to link out to a more comprehensive proposal or pitch.
@Batman is Awesome: A game mockup is a faux screenshot of what you expect the game to look like, layout, etc. Having multiple mockups depicting many facets of the game gives us all a better idea of what you’re trying to achieve. A link to your portfolio of past work would suffice.
@Alexander: I have a question to ask you.
I just stumbled across this contest and am really excited about applying. However, I work as a flash developer in the education field and my clients usually do not request games. So I don’t really have any recent examples of my work that are relevant. Still, I am confident in my programming skills and know that I could make a game to fit the criteria and theme of this contest.
With that in mind, would I be excluded from consideration if I applied to this contest?
Thanks for your help!
@Krista: Feel free to apply. Providing a well thought out set of mockups and game design proposal should suffice.
@Alexander: Thank you for your prompt response!
Somebody mentioned decompiling the asset swf… Would this be okay if the elements were used for a playable mockup–strictly for demonstration purposes? I got a little carried away last week and have a somewhat functioning game already.
Thanks!
This is great news.Thanks.
@Alexander: I’m guessing that’s a “no” then. lol ;P
Good luck to everyone!
@Alexander: you said that 20 people will be chosen,
hm… the prize is only for 10 people
so 10 people left will have to be sad and waste the time they build the game? is there any extra rewards for the 10 others who failed?
Thanks :)
@Vaisaga: There will be 20 chosen, but only 10 will move onto the actual development phase. We have something in store for the remaining 10 who do not move into the development stage. Don’t worry. :)
That’s great :)
Thanks for the info
When are the results coming out for Phase 2?
Have developers been selected for the next phase?
@Jose: They have been selected, but we’re waiting to hear back from all developers. If any drop out, we will move onto the alternates and they will be contacted. I’ll have a new MochiLand post when everything is ready to move forward.
So only the selected developers got contacted?
@Nachtundnebel: We’ll be sending an e-mail out to all participants soon.