The ArtSpark Festival is a game design/theatre production competition taking place in Austin, Texas. For more information, please see The ArtSpark Chronicles - Part I and The ArtSpark Chronicles - Part II .

Previously in the ArtSpark Chronicles

Our team chose one of three sparks to develop into a game concept and demo. For our game concept, called Empires of Mars, we developed numerous marketing materials and two websites. We also planned out a story-driven demo level that would require monumental efforts to complete before the end of the festival.

Part III: The Postmortem

The games presentation for the 2006 ArtSpark Festival took place on June 7th at the Fielding Lecht Gallery in downtown Austin. Over seventy people showed up to see the two game teams present their concepts and show off their demos. Several industry professionals from local companies such as Stray Bullet Games and Edge of Reality were also present to act as judges for the competition. In addition, several members of ArtSpark’s theatre teams were present to show their support, and some even provided entertainment throughout the evening.

The audience response to both presentations was quite positive, with audience members actively participating in spirited question-and-answer sessions about the game concepts. Audience members challenged the two teams to give serious thought to aspects of each game that seemed unclear or not fully developed, and even offered some excellent suggestions for the further development of each project.

After a long week of waiting for the final results, our team was fortunate enough to walk away with the top prize in the games division. Although we won, participating in the ArtSpark Festival was, without a doubt, a humbling and nonstop learning experience for everyone on our team. Looking back, here are a few of the highs and lows of our team’s efforts.

The winning team.