Independent Games Festival
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the indie video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media, later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition. The IGF competition awards a total of $50,000 in prizes to independent developers in Main Competition and Student Competition categories, and held around the same time as the Game Developers Choice Awards event. Competition Structure. The  festival awards ceremony is split into two broad categories: the main IGF competition and the IGF Student Showcase. The main Independent Games Festival, held in March 2012 at San Francisco's GDC 2012, distributed nine major awards: An additional award, "Excellent in Narrative", was added for the 2013 IGF. In addition, the IGF's Student Showcase competition gives out the following awards each year: Prior to the Festival, developers have the opportunity to submit their game in a playable state to the IGF organization committee for a small fee. These titles are then sent to approximately 300 game industry representatives  on the Nominating Committee; these representatives include both indie developers and more mainstream developers and publishers. Each Committee member can nominate any of the provided games to one or more of the categories. Then, for each award category, a pre-selected jury of between seven and fifteen members reviews the nominations and makes a final selection of six finalists (eight for the Nuovo award) and a number of honorable mentions. The selected finalists are expected to present their games at the IGF during the Games Developers Conference; the show provides them a booth space and access to the convention, but  finalists either must secure their own travel and lodgings, or name a proxy to demonstrate their games. During the convention, a separate jury selected by the IGF organization committee will review each game, and just prior to the awards, vote for one game in each category. The only exception is the Audience Award, which is voted through online forms by anyone interested. IGF Competition award history. Years given below indicate the year when the award was given, with the games or developers being recognized from the previous year. Section::::(Main) IGF Competition. alt.ctrl.GDC Award ($3,000). For games that feature  unusual controls or user interactions. Retired awards. Technical Excellence ($3,000). This award was retired starting from the 2014 competition onward.