Acclaim Games, Inc. decided to re-define what user generated content means to the video game industry by letting the gamers design their own professional game from scratch. Over 60,000 signed up to help, immediately making this the biggest game development team on record.

“There was no book we could follow on how to do this. In fact, the books out there seemed to think it was impossible! Could so many non-professional developers come up with new game designs never seen before? Of course they can, and they did!” said the project’s Director David Perry.

Acclaim wanted to make all this effort really worthwhile, so the winner will receive the biggest career jump possible, going from a game player with big dreams to a game director, a full time job, running an important game project for Acclaim that’s fully funded and is being developed from scratch. (And you can bet it will include user-generated content!) “I’ve offered to be their Executive Producer,” says Perry, “to make sure that they get a really fair shot at this.”

The original plan was to have the community design the game, then have a professional team make it. That all changed when the community asked to design AND build the final product.

So the second “building” stage of this project continues, and we have ten independent development teams working on the related Top Secret development contest hoping to win a prize worth up to a million dollars, a publishing deal, and a professional development contract going forward.

The Top Secret design winner and runners-up will be announced by next week. Stay tuned for more!