PREMIO ARCHIMEDE 2012, organized by studiogiochi, concerns the invention of unpublished board games. The Prize, dedicated to the great Alex Randolph, who was its President during the first seven editions, made the wishes of more than thirty authors come true thanks to the pubblication of their games. Great success and many good expectations from the past edition: so far six games are about to be published by the best international publishers.
Everybody can participate, there are no age nor nationality limits. The authors can participate either as a single person or as a group. The Prize is supported by the patronage of the Comune di Venezia and the J.P. Halvah Foundation (founded by the very same Randolph and directed by Herbert Feuerstein who offers a support of €3.500 to the winners (to be spent within the 30 of April 2013), in form of scholarships, stages, contributions for the publication, etc.
During this occasion there will be a commemoration of Alex Randolph. The official magazine for the competition is Focus Brain Trainer.
The Prize is also supported by the cooperation of the Musée Suisse du Jeu (Swiss Museum of games) that will organize an exposition of the final games. All the associations that participate to the event will receive informations about the games competing and will be able to take a look at them.
To participate, please fill in the participation form and send a prototype of the game within the 31th of May 2012 to:
PREMIO ARCHIMEDE 2012 c/o studiogiochi
S. Polo 3083
30125 VENEZIA
The authors are required to pay a participation fee of € 25 for each game, that must be sent with the prototype. This fee is ment to support part of the organization costs.
The eventual costum charges must be payed by authors otherwise the game might be disqualified. Studiogiochi will have the right of first refusal on the finalist games (see the participation form).
For the payment, please attach to the rules a nontransferable cheque to studiogiochi or else an international postal cheque. There will be a participation certificate for each admitted game, indicating the day of the presentation of the game.
Besides the Archimede Prize, the jury will assign the Special Prize Sebastiano Izzo and many other Awards such as:
• Carta Mundi Special Prize for the best card game: the prize consists in 1.000 copies made by Carta Mundi for free. The game must be composed by one or two decks of cards only and it will be produced with its rules and its box. The graphics will be realized for free by ScriBabs.
• Special Prize IDG for the best game entirely created by an author that never published one of his games. For the prototypes with more than one author, if one of them already published a game, they can't be possible candidates.
All the finalists will receive many games offered by the publishers that sponsor the prize, and materials for the creation of new prototypes kindly offered from Spielmaterial.de.
www.spielmaterial.de offers also a 20% discount to anyone who makes an order and partecipates to Archimede. Please contact the Premio Archimede secretary to recieve
the discount code.
Requirements to participate
All the games will need the requirements below. Without these requirements they won’t be allowed to the final.
The game
- Has to be original and unpublished.
- Can’t last more than 90 minutes.
The rules
- Have to be in Italian and/or English and printed.
- Have to be easy to understand and exhaustive (including the indication of the contents of the material and the number of players). The jury must not have a hard time understanding them. It is advisable to use examples and figures.
- Can’t be written in more than 10.000 characters.
- Advice: Before you send the game, let it be played by the testers without giving any help explaining the rules, and observe how it works! That way you will know how to refine and perfection your rules and even your game.
The prototype
- Needs to be contained in a solid cardboard box similar to the games officially produced (gameboard included). The box has to be easy to open, but also well closed. It must be easy to carry, not too heavy and not bigger than approximately 40x30x10 cm.
- It has to be functional. For instance the pawns have to be able to stand easily, the spaces have to be enough big, thee cards must not be too thin, the colours have to be easy to identify, etc.
- the game should not depend on its language. If there is any text necessary it is adviced to use english so that the final jury is able to be indipendent.
- It is not necessary for the game to be presented as a final version, the graphic aspect comes after its use.
- The pieces of the game have to be wrapped separately in order to make it easy to get ready for the game.
- If necessary, the board has to be folded to fit into the box.
- The organization is not responsible for any loss or damage of the prototype during the event.
Information about the authors
On the box and on the rules there must be the name of the game, the name and surname of the authors, their full address, telephone number, and eventually e-mal address.
Participation form
The participation form has to be completely filled in and signed for each participating game.
Restitution of the prototypes
The authors may recollect their prototypes at the end of the final ceremony; all the non recollected prototypes won’t be returned.
Evaluation standards for games
The jury will consider the games accordingly to the following features (in order of importance):
- Originality of the game mechanisms.
- Playability, balance and functionality of the mechanisms.
- Amusement.
- Interaction of the players.
- The possibility that the game will be taken into consideration from editors to be published.
- Theme coherence.
- Quality of the prototype.