What I Learned Judging 4 Game Competitions: The 3-Step Framework for Picking Your Next Project

Over the past month, I’ve served as a judge for four consecutive game competitions — college AI game dev contests, indie game awards, mini-game innovation challenges, and IP story creation jams. After reviewing dozens of projects, two core observations have stuck with me.

First: competitions shouldn’t just judge how polished a demo looks today. They should judge the team, their thinking, and whether the idea can scale into a sustainable business.
Proven commercial mechanics are not a “cheap trick” to penalize. Every tuning point, every monetization placement, is the result of years of real-world testing. Interactivity and social design — the two things that make games stick — are exactly what commercial products refine the hardest.

Second: for teams wondering what game to build next, I always come back to a 3-step framework:

1. Know your DNA. Don’t chase hot genres first. Match the project to your team’s strengths, resources and connections.
2. Find real benchmarks. Study the charts, talk to players of similar products. And remember: your core audience is probably 10+ years younger than you.
3. Do the math upfront. Work backwards from what the market will pay, not forwards from your production cost. Players don’t care what you spent. They care what it’s worth.

One more truth that’s only getting clearer: AI changes the cost of making games, not the moat. “Building it” is becoming cheap. Knowing *what* to build is where the real value lives.

Full deep dive on the judging takeaways and full framework in my latest column 👇

What’s the hardest step for your team when greenlighting a new project? Share your take in the comments.

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