BIC (Busan Indie Connect) Festival 2020 is now accepting game applications for the Rookie (student) Division. The Rookie Division is a new category that was started last year to support indie game developers by offering impartial judging. BIC Committee expects the Rookie Division to vitalize the gaming market with students’ new ideas and creativity.

Ratropolis by Casselgames won the “Rising Star” award in the Rookie Division last year, and managed to rank first in the Steam Top Sellers chart, astonishing everyone.

This year, BIC 2020 is once again opening applications for the Rookie Division, accepting them for 2 weeks from 1 July to 14 July, 3PM. Any individual or team comprising of students (including 2020 senior project teams) or unemployed youths 25 and under (born after 1996) can apply through the BIC official website. Graduate students are not eligible.

The BIC Committee expects more marketing opportunities for developers and their games with the festival held online this 2020. With LG Uplus, some titles will also be linked to Steam through cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, to enable developers to communicate with gamers and gain their feedback.

Despite its short history, the BIC Festival has achieved new milestones yearly to become a global indie gaming festival. Preserving its critical form of communication is priority with this year’s online format.

“The Committee is working hard to bring a sense of real-world excitement to online hosting by carefully planning the exhibition. Since the event will be held online this year, we will be able to overcome the physical limitations of hosting at a single location and present the game titles to more gamers and various people in the gaming industry.”

Tae-Geon Seo, Executive Chairman of the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee

“We are watching out for the issue of uniformity in gaming platforms and genres while the festival is growing, and hope to receive a lot of applications since the organization is trying a lot to support the challenging and innovative ideas of Rookie developers’ to bring diversity to gaming.”

In-Sook Lee, the President & CEO of Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency

BIC Festival 2020 will be from 19 to 25 October, with the exhibition website to be released at a later date.