Deadline: December 31, 2017 00:00 CET
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Eligibility: all creators, working solo or in teams of up to seven. You must be a legal resident in your place of residence and 18 years of age or older as of June 27, 2017.  If you are 18 years of age or older but are considered a minor in your place of residence, you must have your parent’s or legal guardian’s permission to enter. You have the technical programming education, experience and/or knowledge to create games for UWP. You are not a resident of any of the following countries: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. You are not an employee of Microsoft Corporation or an employee of a Microsoft subsidiary
Prizes: more than USD 200,000,- in prizes

Dream.Build.Play Microsoft Challenge 2017

The Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge is pushing game makers to maximize their creativity and create experiences that engage gamers from across the world.

This competition is open to all creators, working solo or in teams of up to seven. Create a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) game for one of the categories below by December 31, 2017, and you’ll have a chance to win cash prizes and share your game with the world.

Cloud-powered game

Grand Prize: $100,000 USD

Build a game that uses Azure Cloud Services on the backend, like Service Fabric, CosmosDB, containers, VMs, storage, and Analytics. Judges will give higher scores to games that use multiple services in creative ways-and will award bonus points for Mixer integration.

PC game

Grand Prize: $50,000 USD

Create a Windows 10 game using whatever technology you prefer—even middleware like Unity, Cocos, and GameMaker—and publish it to the Windows Store. Using Windows 10 features like Cortana or Inking will give your game an advantage with the judges.

Mixed reality game

Grand Prize: $50,000 USD

Create an immersive mixed reality experience that lets players interact with 3D volumetric content in a virtual space. Use whichever tools you prefer (like Unity) to build as long as your game uses Windows Mixed Reality. Judges will prefer games that incorporate audio content.

Console game

Grand Prize: $25,000 USD

Build a UWP game for the Xbox One console family and incorporate the Xbox Live Creators Program with at least Xbox Live presence. Extra consideration will be given to games that incorporate Xbox Live services like leaderboards and statistics.

Additional Prizes

Xsolla is sponsoring an additional prize for entrants competing in the PC Game category.

One team will win a full year of access to Xsolla’s global game distribution platform, plus a trip to Los Angeles to pitch your game for development with Xsolla Capital.

Developer Diary Contest

Open now through December 31, 2017. Create a diary that highlights your efforts building UWP games to compete for a cash prize of $5,000 USD.

Diaries can be blog or video posts and must contain a minimum of 5 posts spanning a time period of more than 30 days. Be sure to reference Microsoft or other Dream.Build.Play sponsored technologies used in your post. Blog posts much contain 350 words or more. Each video entry must be at least 8 minutes in length.

For more opportunities, check our opportunities sections and subscribe to our weekly newsletters.