Assassin's Creed Video Contest
IFC Announces Sponsorship for a Contest on Ubisofts Upcoming Game.
A new contest, sponsored by Independent Film Council, asks video game players to create their own 6 minutes mini-masterpiece on one of 5 assassination topics.
On June 26th, 2007 a very interesting new contest has been announced by the Independent Film Council Network. The contest is being announced in correlation with Ubisoft’s upcoming release, Assassin’s Creed. In the game, players will take the role of an assassin in the historical past. The main character is an ancestor of the character players begin as. Players will play through the life of this assassin of old and relive his tale.
Ubisoft is the developer of the popular Prince of Persia game series, which introduced players to a play system as focused on acrobatics and puzzle solving as much as on combat. Assassin’s Creed focuses on stealth and acrobatic-based adventures through medieval times. Players will be forced to use environmental objects, people, and situations to carry out complicated missions, including assassinations obviously. The game developers pride themselves on their use of interactive environments, with one developer saying that players will be able to interact with something in their environment every few meters in the game.
The IFC announced contest, available only to those who live in North America, will be a 6 minute “masterpiece” on assassination. Each film is to include one of the five themes which the game is based on: assassination, “social stealth” (blending in with crowds and generally not standing out as unusual), public assassinations, historical assassinations, or conspiracies surrounding historical assassinations (the shooter in the grassy knoll, anyone?). Essentially the short film will be about getting someone killed.
The grand prize is $10,000, an Xbox 360 and entertainment system from Microsoft, a copy of Assassin’s Creed the game, and their short-film will be included in the limited-edition Assassin’s Creed game pack. Two runners up will receive $2,500, an Xbox 360, a copy of Assassin’s Creed, their films will also be included in the limited edition package, and will also be aired on the IFC network. The short-film will also be shown on the IFC network. Currently, the guidelines for these video are rather vague, but they are listed on the IFC’s webpage.
With all the negative publicity surrounding games today, such as the recent Adult-Only rating given to Rockstar’s Manhunt 2 and its subsequent production delay, or the recently approved New York State bill which makes selling underage children strongly rated games a class E felony, one has to wonder if this move by the IFC is really a good decision. Once word gets around that the IFC is rewarding video gamers for coming up with an “assassination video masterpiece”, **it could hit the proverbial fan.
