King is running a new contest for developersconsidering or already using its new free game engine Defold that will see the winners heading out for an all paid trip to San Francisco for GDC 2017.

The publisher will award six winners, with up to three members from each team heading out to one of the biggest game developer conferences in the world.

The deadline for the Defold GDC Competition 2017 is January 22nd.

To find out more information on exactly how you can take part in the contest and what exactly is in it for you, we caught up with King Evangelist Oleg Pridiuk.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you explain briefly exactly what Defold is and why developers might want to use it?

Oleg Pridiuk: Defold is a tool, a way and a reason to make better games. King relies on Defold and other internal technologies to deliver on scale and quality required for our games to stay in the top charts globally.

In a way, Defold is our statement for the industry: we stand for how games are ought to be developed and for the performance games are to deliver to players.

Down to the basics, Defold is an editor, multiplatform runtime and community resources. We shared that with public last GDC. And next time we’re in San Francisco, we’re showing a new editor, a C++ extendable runtime, a community portal, announcing a big partnership and arranging an indie booth.

Why have you set up a competition for your Defold game engine?

This competition is very important to us at Defold, at King and to our users and partners. Defold is as good as games #madewithdefold are, so we’re showing best games made by independent talent. Not the engine features and bullet points, but actual games is what really matters.

Indie developers are often on the front line pioneering new game experiences, mechanics, ideas. Bringing the best independent game developers to GDC in SF is a decent way to help them ship better games.

Exactly what Defold is all about.

Who is eligible to take part?

The competition is open and is not particularly restrictive. Developers who love challenges, teams willing to invest in learning a new technology may find this competition a good reason to try out Defold.

Indie teams looking for a cross-platform game engine to substitute Flash may fall in love with Defold. Teams targeting mobile players in developing markets may find Defold is their tool of choice.

There is more in this competition, like incentives and opportunities we may offer, but we really talk about this once we see a team is leveraging Defold and is working on a promising game.

What kind of games are you looking for?

We don’t expect big established game development houses to jump on Defold immediately. Instead, today Defold is better choice for indie teams who have skills and ambitions, who can potentially leverage some of incentives we offer.

Our community is broad and vibrant today, with bigger more polished titles surviving the last mile before release. Some of these are mobile games, some are more of a desktop or web experience.

Everybody is welcome to make the game they want, if they feel our technology suits their needs and helps them make better games.

Exactly what will developers get out of the competition?

We at King can do what indies cannot, and coming to GDC may still be too expensive for talent outside of US.

Last year we brought over three teams, this year we’re bringing six teams from all over the world to San Francisco.

We’re providing flights, hotels and expo space at the hip GDC Play area.

This is set in competition rules, but really our goal is to help selected teams deliver commercially successful projects. Numbers of players in Defold-authored games is our KPI here, we can say.

Can you tell us some more information about your open training event for Defold later this month? Exactly what will attendees learn?

We’ve invested a lot in education and trainings last year with very good feedback that keeps up going this direction.

In year 2017 we’re trying our a new initiative with opening up internal Defold trainings event to public.

The pilot event is just a week after PG Connects London. It is happening at King's London office and is targeted at professional developers.

Deep dive into code and games architecture might be too complex and too intense for some, as this training was initially meant for King developers. It is a bit scary, but we feel it is worth a try.

You can find out more information about the Defold GDC Competition 2017 here.