By Paul Hunter
If you follow NextGen Player on Twitter most likely you've come across a tweet or two where I've expressed my love for the weekly video game radio show Got Game that airs on The FAN590.
Got Game's host Zack Cooper and the crew recently talked with Sari Ruda, Managing Director of the Vortex Competition about the Boot Camp and Competition taking place November 3, 4 & 5 in Toronto.
The interview covers a lot of interesting facets of the event including the over-arching goals of the competition, the learnings and opportunities registrants will receive at the Boot Camp, and the lucrative prizing available to the Vortex winner.
This is the 5th anniversary of the Vortex Competition and according to Ruda they have learned quite a bit about emerging game designers over the years and have used this knowledge to fine-tune the Vortex offering to bring out the full potential of each participant.
"One of things we discovered along the way was that people might have a great concept, but they really didn't understand the nuts and bolts of putting together a business," says Ruda, "so what we're trying to do is to help them put a realistic goal together and then when they pitch the judges with these concepts the rest of it falls into place and they'll have a good chance of having a positive outcome."
As an example of how effective the competition has been for previous winners, they will be bringing in a speaker from the 2007 competition and he'll discuss how his Vortex successes have helped him grow a 23 person business since March 2008. That sounds like quite an impressive feat in only eight-teen months.
You can listen to the full interview by clicking on the flash player below or by heading over to the Got Game homepage here and downloading the October 3rd Edition. The Vortex interview begins at the 19 minutes mark: