Congratulations!  If you are reading this, you are considering a submission to the Students’ Choice Award category.  Students’ Choice is an opportunity to expose your game to potentially thousands of middle and high school students in the Central Florida area, in addition to industry expert evaluators.  If your game becomes a finalist, students will play your game, provide feedback, and collectively determine the award winner.  There are some technical guidelines that must be followed to facilitate effective deployment of your game to the public school computer systems, and thus maximum exposure to students.

All Games

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  • The game must be designed around a suitable topic, preferably educational in nature, for students between the ages of 12 and 18 (grades 6-12). It will be very helpful to cite any academic standards used in creation of your game.
  • Students’ Choice candidates must agree to have their games installed in middle and high schools (possibly over 100) through the evaluation period.  Students’ Choice finalists will also be given the opportunity to leave their games installed in the schools for student play for the remainder of the school year.

Installed Games

  • Games must be designed to have a silent command line installer (e.g., MSI.)
  • Games must not require administrative rights to run.

Web Games

  • Ideally, the game will not require a login to run.  The developer is encouraged to keep the required number of logins to a minimum, but note that the game will likely be played concurrently by students at different locations.  If an individual login is absolutely required for each player, SGS&C will provide the required number after finalist games have been announced.
  • Web game entrants must submit a full list of web addresses used in the game with the initial submission documentation to facilitate web filter pre-clearance.
  • If a web game uses any non-standard web ports (anything other than 80 or 443,) then please include this requirement in the initial submission documentation.
  • Preferred: Use native browser functionality instead of requiring a plugin.

Mobile games

  • At this time, the schools cannot provide support for student evaluation of mobile games on mobile devices. Mobile games must provide a version that can be installed on a personal computer platform or delivered through a web browser. Mobile games will still be played and scored as such in the regular evaluation, but will be played and scored as a PC game for the Students’ Choice evaluation.
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Thank you for your attention to these details. We know you will find competing in the Students’ Choice Awards category a valuable experience.  Download a PDF version of this page here.