Chapter 784: Preparing the Design Competition
The design competition hosted by Chen Mo was held twice a year, once in March after the New Year and once in July during graduation season.
The July graduation season competition was open to all current students, and anyone with a university degree or higher could register to participate.
The March competition after the New Year was primarily aimed at designers within the industry, whether independent designers or those working under other companies, all of whom could register.
The list of participants would undergo preliminary screening to eliminate those who did not meet the requirements. After that, the remaining participants would go through the preliminary rounds, semi-finals, and finals, ultimately selecting the most outstanding designers.
The preliminary rounds were distributed across more than twenty major cities nationwide, while the semi-finals and finals were held in the imperial capital. For this year’s competition, Chen Mo considered renting a venue in the imperial capital. Next year, once the new headquarters was completed, the event could be held there.
These two timeframes were also carefully chosen. In July, graduates had just finished school and were frantically searching for jobs, while in March, the IT industry typically saw a routine wave of resignations, with many skilled designers looking for new opportunities during this period.
Moreover, staggering the two times ensured fairness in the competition, preventing graduates from being lumped together with seasoned industry designers.
Unlike previous competitions, designers would only learn the specific topic of the competition upon arrival at the venue. They would write design drafts and produce work on-site. For exceptionally large-scale games, they could submit a more detailed design concept draft. If the judges were interested in the concept, further development could continue afterward.
During the semi-finals and finals, designers would work on game design in official venues provided by the organizers. This process could last a week or even a month, giving them enough time to develop medium-sized or even large-scale games.
The judges for these design competitions were seasoned independent designers on the Thunder Game Platform, such as Li Feng, Zhou Haibin, and Qiu Hengyang, among others.
These designers had collaborated with Chen Mo on the Thunder Game Platform for a long time, each with their own representative works, and were very willing to participate in this game design competition. On one hand, they contributed alongside Chen Mo to the development of the entire gaming industry; on the other hand, they gained public exposure, as the competition would likely be live-streamed, watched by many players, gaming enthusiasts, and industry professionals nationwide.
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The specific competition rules still needed to be detailed, but Chen Mo’s vision was clear: to make the Thunder Interactive Entertainment Game Design Competition the largest, fairest, most professional, and most promising design competition in the country.
He hoped this competition could sweep up outstanding graduates eager to enter the gaming industry, as well as excellent independent designers already in the field, igniting people’s passion for the gaming industry while also serving as a large-scale recruitment event for Thunder Interactive Entertainment.
As for the competition rewards, they were naturally the most generous.
Beyond standard cash prizes and awards, Chen Mo would personally review all works by designers who made it to the finals and decide whom to send invitations to.
Of course, the competition had many experienced designers as judges, each with their own criteria for evaluating works, and the competition would have corresponding rules. However, Chen Mo’s preferences stood independent of all judges. Even if a designer was overlooked by every judge, as long as Chen Mo thought it was okay, that was sufficient.
Designers favored by Chen Mo could choose for themselves: either join Thunder Interactive Entertainment as employees or become independent game designers collaborating with the Thunder Game Platform.
Each choice had its pros and cons. As an independent designer, income could be very unstable, but they could design games freely. The Thunder Game Platform would have a special recommendation mechanism for these individuals, allowing more players to discover them and their works.
Whether as employees of Thunder Interactive Entertainment or as independent game designers recognized by Chen Mo on the Thunder Game Platform, they could secure a place in the new headquarters of Thunder Interactive Entertainment.
This also paved the way for Chen Mo’s future plans.
So far, Chen Mo’s team had remained relatively small. When he created games, he chose the best options based on the team’s current situation.
However, future games would inevitably need to scale up.
Given the office space of the new headquarters, the existing Thunder Interactive Entertainment employees might not even fill one-tenth of a single large floor, leaving plenty of room for expansion.
In the future, Chen Mo might develop an immensely vast world, or even a multiverse collection of many worlds.
For example, like in certain web novels, players could freely travel and adventure across multiple worlds, each with different tasks and mysteries, all subtly controlled by a unified will...
Clearly, no matter how complex or massive a game was, it was designed bit by bit by designers and built piece by piece by the entire development team, with no shortcuts possible.
To develop such a game, Chen Mo couldn’t complete all the worlds by himself. It would require an enormous development team to handle various parts to truly do it justice.
Therefore, Chen Mo was recruiting these outstanding designers now to prepare for the future. If he wanted to design this kind of “infinite flow” game world, these talented designers could each take charge of one world, with Chen Mo only needing to do the final review and screening.
Even if these large-scale games weren’t produced in the short term, these designers could still work on their own projects without any conflict.
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This was why, at present, only Chen Mo in the country had the qualifications to host such a large-scale game design competition.
It came down to influence.
No other designer in the country could match Chen Mo’s level of influence.
Chen Mo had successful works across various gaming genres, from globally popular competitive games to high-quality VR games that won Game of the Year. To other designers, Chen Mo was the strongest in the country. Meanwhile, Thunder Interactive Entertainment had ample funds, powerful channels, and a massive player base, making his influence self-evident.
Once the rules for the game design competition were roughly finalized, it was time to start warming up.
The March competition after the New Year would be temporarily skipped, as the rules for the industry-focused competition were more complex and there wasn’t enough preparation time.
Thunder Interactive Entertainment’s first game design competition was set for July of the following year. However, before that, news could be leaked in advance to give interested graduates time to prepare, treating this game design competition as one of their post-graduation life choices.