07 Sep Scottish Games Awards 2023 – GAMES Categories
Time is ticking on and entries are flooding in for the 2023 Scottish Games Awards – but what exactly are they – and why should you enter your game, your colleagues, or even (we’ll whisper this) yourself?
The idea behind the games awards is very simple. We want to celebrate and showcase the incredible work being done across Scotland today. In 2023. One of the things we hear a *lot* is that we need to stop talking about games from the past (you know the ones…) which I think we can all agree on. In order to do that – we need to get the awesome people, incredible games and amazing talent from Scotland out in front of the world.
The awards are our chance to do just that. It gives us a platform for the media, for the rest of the industry and the rest of Scotland to meet the individuals and organisations working in the games ecosystem – and find the games they need to know – and play.
Who Can Enter?
Everyone is eligible. The whole idea is to recognise achievement and success. So whether you are a professional developer, a part-time indie, or a student team, we want to hear from you.
We have categories for a whole range of people from those at the start of their careers (Rising Star), to industry legends (Lifetime Achievement). We have categories recognising outstanding work in areas like diversity, education and those who are giving back and working to help the sector get better (Community Spirit).
You can enter your friends, peers or colleagues, members of your team (your boss) or even yourself. Surprisingly, there’s no downside to putting yourself forward. We can be a little shy about celebrating success in Scotland, so an entry based upon your own hard work is just as valid and just as welcome, as one for your friends and teammates.
You can see the whole list of categories at the foot of this post…
In this post we’re going to look at our GAMES categories and give you a little more info and background on what the awards are, who they’re open to and what the entry criteria are.
Which Games Are Eligible?
One key thing to say to every potential entrant is that we’ve kept our entry guidelines as loose as possible. We accept entries from any creator, on any platform, of any genre. As long as your game was released between August 1st 2022 and September 2nd 2023 you can enter. We’re interpreting released as being publicly available – i.e. out there for people to play. This can be on itch.io, available on the App Store, present in a gallery, downloadable from your website or in a browser, or in a box in a shop.
There are no restrictions on business model, revenue model or price. Free-to-play games are eligible, as are full-price triple-A.
One change we’ve made this year is to the location of the developers. Entries are open to distributed teams, working worldwide, as long as 50% or more of the team are in Scotland, you can enter the awards.
Games Categories
The 2023 Scottish Games Awards have four major games categories. The first two are the Small Budget Game and Large Budget Game trophies. The reason for splitting them is simple, we want every studio to have a chance to pick up a trophy, not just the major franchises or AAA games – though of course we want to shout about them too.
Small Budget & Large Budget Games
The small-budget title is open to any game with a total budget of under £10,000. Why £10K? When we created the awards last year, we spoke to several indie developers and studios across the country and most people thought it was a decent starting point. The large budget category is open to any game with a total budget above that figure.
For both of those categories, we’re using an honour system. Nobody is going to ask to see your accounts or demand evidence of spend.
New Awards For 2023
We’ve also added two new game categories for 2023 – The Spirit of Scotland Award and the Pure Quality Award. These are a little different – but are there to open up the awards to more games and recognise those that may be outside the mainstream.
The Spirit of Scotland award is open to games that feature Scottish culture, heritage, language or characters. This lets us recognise games that showcase and use Scotland as a setting, feature Scottish history, or even use Scots or Gaelic languages. These can be ‘commercial’ games, or created by, or in conjunction with educational organisations, libraries, museums or galleries.
The Pure Quality Award is our wild card. It’s designed to recognise ‘success outside ‘creative impact’. Basically it’s our opportunity to recognise games which have done something special which isn’t necessarily sales, downloads or revenue. It’s open to any game which has done something special. This can be a commercial game, a part of a cultural project, something more experimental, or experiential or an installation. It can be a Mod. It can be an applied game, or it can be something even weirder, more creative, bolder, braver or odd. It’s up to you.
Entries for the Scottish Games Awards 2023 are open now! You have until 18:00 on 22 September 2023 to get your entries in. Have we mentioned that all entries to this year’s awards are free? We meant to. All entries to the Scottish Games Awards are FREE. Tell your friends…
Awards Categories
There are FIFTEEN categories open for entries in this year’s competition…
- Small Budget Games (£0 – £10,000)
- Large Budget Games (£10,000 – upwards)
- Spirit Of Scotland
- Pure Quality (Creative Impact)
- Art & Animation
- Technical Achievement
- Audio
- Creativity
- Best Tools/Tech
- Best Education Programme
- Best Educator
- Diversity Champion
- Community Spirit (Stewart Gilray Award)
- Rising Star
- Lifetime Achievement
Enter Now!
The awards won’t work without you. We need your entries. With 15 categories on offer, we really hope that one or more of these awards are relevant to you, to your friends, your team and your games. Take a look and submit your entries here.
If you have any questions, are not sure about eligibility, or want to find ut more about the awards, please ask us directly.