At the Independent Games Festival Awards ceremony in San Francisco last week, seven different independently created games received awards for their respective achievements, and recognition for the teams that made them.

Last week before the show, we asked you to ‘Hold Thumbs for QCF Design’ and it turns out our confidence in the Cape Town-based indie developer wasn’t misplaced - the team was amongst the winners during the IGF Awards and walked away with the ‘Excellence in Design’ award during the event for Desktop Dungeons.

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Are you holding thumbs for QCF Design?

Just a little later today (or very early tomorrow morning in South Africa), Cape Town-based indie game developer QCF Design will be attending the Independent Games Festival Awards in San Francisco, and the three-person team just so happens to be nominated for no less than two awards during the ceremony – the ‘Excellence in Design’ award and none other than the ultra prestigious Seumus McNally Grand Prize!

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QCF Design, an independent game developer based in Cape Town, South Africa, was recently nominated for awards in two categories for this year’s Independent Games Festival Awards taking place during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week.

What earned the three-person team these two nods? A ‘little’ game by the name of Desktop Dungeons, a rapid, short-session Roguelike dungeon-crawler that became something of an overnight sensation in indie game circles and indie developer circles alike.

The folks at PopCap Games also liked it a whole bunch.

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Every year, for the past twelve years, the annual Independent Games Festival Awards have taken place in concert with the Game Developers Conference, a gathering of professional game developers from all around the world.

This year, the thirteenth annual IGF Awards will take place to recognise the work and accomplishments of some of the best independent game developers, who are all currently chipping away at their grand game designs to eventually share a finished, fully polished product with the world.

Finalists for the awards ceremony have been announced, and there are some heavy-hitters in amongst the categories which comprise ‘Excellence in Visual Art,’ ‘Excellence in Design,’ and the ultra-prestigious ‘Seumas McNally Grand Prize.’

Included in the nominees list is the Cape Town, South Africa-based QCF Design for the team’s fast-paced Roguelike dungeon-crawling RPG, Desktop Dungeons.

Here is the full list of nominees in each category:

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A little over a year ago I conducted a series of interviews with a diverse, influential and talented group of developers both from and based in South Africa, which resulted in an article for industry trade site Gamasutra entitled ‘The South African Game Development Scene: Past Present and Future,’ which attempted to look at the history of game development in the country and surmise how an industry may rise and move forward here.

A lot of the interview material was unfortunately left out of the article for reasons of conciseness, and I say unfortunately because almost every response I was given was a gold mine of information and history that could potentially not only benefit aspiring South African game developers, and game developers in other developing nations looking to make a living in this industry, but also inform gaming enthusiasts around the world as to the complexity, and joy, of making videogames under difficult circumstances.

So after lying dormant on my hard drive for a year, I’ve decided to spruce up the interviews, which are just as relevant now as they were then, and start posting them here on El33tonline in a six-part series, continuing today with part three, and an interview with Danny Day (read part one and part two at your leisure).

Danny Day (known as ‘dislekcia’ in the online development community) is the founder and leader of South African game development community Game.Dev and owner of indie game developer QCF Design (which stands for Quarter Circle Forward), and has been creating and developing games in different forms for most of his life, finding his first great success with the innovative and stylised multiplayer shooter, Monochrome.

Ater working at a variety of contract jobs and studying during his teens to early twenties, Day founded Game.Dev and had a brief stint as a network programmer at South African developer, I-Imagine, working on Final Armada.

While doing much to encourage the local game development community and advocate its growth, Day founded QCF Design with the intention to focus on the development of original, smaller-in-scope independent games on a variety of platforms, as well as work on contract advergames, and continues to grow the Game.Dev community with regular development competitions (such as the recent Competition 24 dealing with the theme of ‘Coherence’) and meet-ups (a good example being the community’s gathering at rAge 2009).

Day has been extremely busy since I corresponded with him regarding the interview, so where I can, I’ve included more recent information (that he was kind enough to send my way) after each relevant question to bring you up-to-date.

Let’s begin the interview:

Continue reading The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 3: Danny Day.