Alan Wake has been spotted... in Tokyo. According to a Microsoft promotional flyer the highly anticipated psychological thriller will make an appearance at the Tokyo Games Show in September. But there's more.

Microsoft held a competition last year called "WOW - Win Experiences Money Can't Buy" that gave one lucky winner the chance to be "digitally made-over and inserted (virtually of course) into a blockbuster game!" That game being Alan Wake. Whoever the lucky winner was flew to Finland where they were digitally mastered and inserted into Wake's world. Well, a year is a long time to wait to see the finished product, but the second part of the prize will come to fruition in September when the winner will be flown to the 2008 Tokyo Games Show to finally see themselves on the screen.

It looks like the hype meter for Alan Wake is set to go red-line later this year.

Sometimes all you need is an easy-to-understand business simulation with a simple premise to engage you. Signal is that game. Combining some simple graphics and gameplay with many different nuances and play styles makes this a game definitely worth playing. The goal of Signal is to take over the board, reducing an enemy's ISP to dust by providing better service and by sabotaging their hubs and connections. You must place your own hubs, connect houses and businesses, and advertise to gain more prominence. It has a very shallow learning curve, but the strategy involved is anything but shallow. Another excellent entry in the TOJam 2008 competition.

Big Download again thanks everyone for participating in the Spore Creature Creator Contest. Our judges picked their Top 10, all of whom with a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator. The readers have spoken, and there was a very close race for third place that came down to just one vote.

Without further ado, we're proud to announce the three grand prize winners of the Big Download Spore Creature Creator Contest!




Kyle from Minneapolis, MN wins the Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet!




Roman from Mattawan, MI wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card!




Ian from Silver Spring, MD wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card!

Congratulations to all the winners, and please be on the lookout for future contests hosted by Big Download.


Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Windows
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac

We just love indie contests here at Big Download. They give the independent developers a voice and motivation to try out something new and different while keeping them from falling into the trap of "making a game perfect". People always work better with a deadline, after all. Eegra has just recently finished up the submissions phase of their first development contest and, we must admit, the games look amazing. From the trippy visuals of Chaos Wave to the shmupping of Go Beryllium!, the entries look absolutely incredible. As soon as the winners are determined, the games will be released for download. Look for our coverage as soon as the contest wraps up!

Sony Online first announced plans to offer women a chance to win a $10,000 game development scholarship last February at GDC. Today the developer/publisher has announced the first winner of the G.I.R.L scholarship as Julia Brasil of San Fransisco was awarded the tuition scholarship for the Arts Institute's game development program.

Brasil won the scholarship over 100 other applications. In order to win she submitted two essays along with concept artwork and a in-game design. She will also get a 10 week paid internship at one of Sony Online's development studios. Sony Online also announce that t-shirts with the G.I.R.L. logo will go on sale sometime later this summer.

The Big Download Team thanks everyone who participated in the Spore Creature Creator Giveaway Contest. We got a ton of fantastic, creative, creatures and had a tough time choosing our favorites, but we managed to pick out 10 lucky winners who will each get a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator.

Now we turn the contest over to you, the Big Download readers. Check out the Top 10 Spore creatures and vote for your favorite by replying to this post (one vote per person, please). Grand prize winner gets a Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet. Second Prize is a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card. Third prize winner will receive a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card.

So, check out the Spore Creature Creator Contest Top 10 gallery and cast your vote today! We'll tally up all the votes on July 14 and announce the grand prize winners on the 15th.



Review Spore Creature Creator Contest Announcement
Review Official Rules for giveaway

Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Windows
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac

We are just a week away from the start of E3 but we are also just a few weeks away from the start of Quakecon 2008, the the 13th annual free LAN party-gaming convention sponsored by Doom and Quake developers id Software. Today the event's organizers announced that one lucky attendee of Quakecon 2008 will win a rather sweet prize; a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe valued at $55,000.

The Jetstream Blue painted Corvette will be given out thanks to Ventrilo, the well-know voice communication software that's used in a number of LAN tournaments and multiplayer matches. 250 Corvette lottery tickets will be given out during QuakeCon to attendees who win various events and contests as well as random drawings. Quakecon 2008 will be held in Dallas, Texas from July 31-August 3.

Last year, the organizers of E3 switched to a media invite format by moving the show from the Los Angeles Convention Center to several Santa Monica hotels. One other location used was the Barker Hanger at Santa Monica Airport which was almost universally loathed by journalists attending the event due to its distance from the rest of the show (over 20 minutes by shuttle) and the lack of interesting games show in its rather small building.

Now the Entertainment Software Association has made the good call to return E3 this year to the LA Convention Center and the Championship Gaming Series is trying to make E3 2008 work to their benefit. The pro gaming tournament organization is holding its world quarter finals during E3 week in LA and the tournament organizers know a ton of gaming journalists are in the area around that time. However, they are choosing to hold these events (on July 14 and 16) at the infamous Barker Hanger. Huh? There are a ton of locations in LA they could have used but making us media types go back to that awful place is sure to be not looked upon kindly by those same media reps. Still it might be interesting to cover. We just have to get those bad E3 2007 memories out of our head.

So when your mom comes into your room and finds you playing The Sims 2, does she tell you, "Quit wasting your time with that game," you can show this this article for proof that playing Maxis' people sim game can actually pay off. The game's publisher Electronic Arts announced that a person who designed an outft in the game will see that outfit in the real world and sold in over 1,000 H&M stores.

The outfit was designed via a contest where people were encourage to upload H&M inspired clothing designs into the TheSims2.com Exchange. The winning outfit, which was voted on by over 100,000 people, will begin to be sold in the US on July 31 and cost $14.95.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment debuted its first trailer for the upcoming MMO Stargate Worlds several months ago on an episode of the TV series Stargate Atlantis. That first trailer, however, didn't actually show gameplay from the MMO. Tonight, the first actual publicly seen gameplay trailer from Stargate Worlds will be shown at 8 pm ET on G4TV's X-Play series.

In related news, the developer has teamed up with PC maker Alienware for a contest where the winner will get an Alienware Area-51 PC with a Dell 30 inch monitor and an advanced copy of Stargate Worlds.

Utilizing City of Heroes / City of Villains in your next machinima creation could land you a 2009 Toyota Matrix S. GameTrailers.com and Toyota have teamed up to award one creative director the new, fully loaded, ride for the best machinima using NCSoft's super hero or villain MMO. Submissions are to uploaded to GameTrailers.com from July 1st through August 10th with winners announced during Spike's GTTV on September 12th.

For full contest details and rules check out GameTrailers.com.

If you are an independent game developer looking for exposure for your title, there's no better way to do it than entering the Independent Games Festival. Today the organizers of the IGF announced that submissions are now open for the 2009 edition of the festival. This will be the 11th annual edition of the IGF which in the past has awarded cash prizes to such acclaimed games like Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf and World of Goo.

The deadline to submit games to the 2009 IGF is November 1 for the main competition and November 15 for the student competition. The awards will be given out on March 25 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Over $50,000 in cash prizes will be given out in several categories, including the new Innovation Award. The big one remains the Seumas McNally Grand Prize where one game's dev team will receive $20,000.

If you have been bashful in entering Big Download's Spore Creature Creator contest but are still considering entering your extra-special creature you only have a few more hours to make up your mind. Yep, its the final day for our Spore Creature Creator contest where you can some great prizes for having the most creative and popular creature made from Maxis' stand alone editor for their upcoming sim game Spore.

More details are provided below but the most important one is the deadline. You have until 10 pm ET tonight to submit your entries. After that the Big Download team will pick the top 10 best and then let our readers pick their favorite. The clock is ticking so get going now.

Official Rules.
Contest announcement.
Spore Creature Creator demo.

A number of months ago, free-to-play MMO publisher Acclaim announced Project Top Secret, a game development project that was designed to give first time game designers experience in making a full-fledged professional game title. One of the aspects of the contest was that there would be an overall winner who would be given a chance to direct the development of an upcoming Acclaim game.

Now the project has an official winner. Michael "Doran" Zummo has won the grand prize based on his contributions to the Top Secret Project (which has over 60,000 people working on the game). Zummo will now take over as director of another upcoming Acclaim project with well known game designer Dave Perry helping him out as executive producer. Other members of the Top Secret team have already been hired by Perry and Acclaim on other projects That's not the end of the project, however. The Top Secret team will continue to work on making the game for release by Acclaim.

Are you enjoying the Spore Creature Creator? Good. Have you been creating all sorts of abominations. Even better. Have you submitted any of them to Big Download's Spore Creature Creator contest? You haven't? What are you waiting for?

Big Download is looking for your most ingenious, funniest, and absurd creations (nothing pornographic, please). Choose your absolute best design, submit it to us up until July 1, and cross your fingers in the hope of winning one of our awesome prizes.

Interested in full details? Of course you are! Everything you need to know is gathered right here, so read carefully, download the Creature Creator demo if you haven't already (you can use the full version if you have it), and let your imagination run wild.

Official Rules.
Contest announcement.
Spore Creature Creator demo.