I'm excited to reveal that the first ever Dobbs Challenge, a special game competition brought to you in association with the world-renowned Dr. Dobb's Journal has just launched.

Participants can win from a prize pool of $10,000 by downloading our specially created "Dr. Dobb's Challenge" game for either Windows and Windows Mobile and modifying it using a trial version of Visual Studio 2008.

The games star the first-ever personification of Dr. Dobbs, alongside the characters from Microsoft's famous 'Defy All Challenges' machinima videos, as players battle to collect Visual Studio icons and complete the levels, and the full source code and art is freely provided for programmers to mod the results.

If you'd like to take part, simply head along to The Dobbs Challenge website and check it out! A full contest guide is available to walk you through what you need to do, and I, as administrator and community manager at The Dobbs Challenge, hope to see many of you there taking part in the discussion and creativity.

Don't forget that the first prize on offer is the $2000 Dobbs First Month Challenge, which will reward the best game produced in the first month of the competition, so you might want to get cracking as soon as possible!