Changes to upcoming Independent Games Festival announced

This year's Independent Games Festival (IGF) has been subject to a few new changes, organisers have announced on Gamasutra.

Chairman Brandon Boyer has revealed several changes to be made to the upcoming Independent Games Festival, which will run during the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Boyer detailed the changes to the coming show, as well as reiterating changes that came into effect at the most recent IGF.

Going forward, the category for Technical Excellence will be removed, which Boyer put down to the "rise of widespread, affordable middleware".

The removal of the category for Technical Excellence has allowed for an increase from five to six finalists for the remaining categories, which includes visual art, audio, design, narrative, and the Seumas McNally grand prize.

The Student Showcase and Nuovo Awards will remain unchanged, with eight finalists selected per category and Honorable Mentions made for each award.

The previous year's biggest change disallowing previous IGF finalists to re-enter the same game will continue to be in effect. The rule applies to both the Main and Student categories, and prevents former Student Showcase games from entering the Main category. Entrants in the previous year whose game did not become a finalist in either Student or Main categories are permitted to re-enter their game.

Past IGF finalists and winners include Braid, World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, Minecraft, and Fez. Valve previously granted all IGF finalists an opportunity to accept a distribution deal through digital distribution platform Steam.

The 2014 Independent Games Festival will take place on March 19 next year in San Francisco, California, as part of the annual Game Developers Conference.