The IndieCade Award

The IndieCade Award is a peer-to-peer award-giving game played at the IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games. Designer/game director/all-around-genius Gabe Smedresman describes the game as follows:

The Indiecade Award is a recognition that festival attendees can award to each other for a supportive word in a time of need, a critical donation or piece of advice, or for having created a personally meaningful game or written work.

Volunteers will solicit tweet-length awards and recipient info from attendees each day. During the awards ceremony and festival afternoons, we’ll engrave the awards onto acrylic cubes, locate the recipients, and deliver the awards.

On Sunday, those who have received and given the most awards will be recognized for their positivity and supportiveness.

It was an honor to be a part of pulling together a project like this. Based on the reactions of people who gave or received the awards, I think it accomplished it what it set out to do — that is, “encourage the kind of behavior we want to see [in the games community]: positivity, encouragement, and mutual support” — and then some.

Special thanks to Gabe, Mattie Brice, Crash Space LA, Christina Orcutt, Jessica Escobedo, Chelsea Howe, Laird Melamed, Tracy Fullerton, Peter Brinson, Rob Manuel, Jesse Vigil, Richard Lemarchand, Funomena, Indiecade, Elizabeth Sampat, and all the IndieCade volunteers for making this happen. Looking forward to doing it again next year!