How to donate to our cause on HopeMob: (Please read all of this before donating!)

(note: You can skip step 1 if you wish to donate anonymously, however you cannot comment on the donation page- which will become important for later).

1) Head over to HopeMob.org, and create an account on the site. Give yourself a username and maybe a picture and a small bio (not required)

2) Visit our donation page on HopeMob.org. Here is a direct link to our special page: https://hopemob.org/s/1ht-help-the-gaming-community-help-the-boston-marathon-victims

Donate Now!

3) There is a button on the right side of our story (feel free to read that). Click it.

4) You will be taken to a page asking how much you would like to donate. Please note, HopeMob has an optional 15% site operations donation on by default. Feel free to contribute to that, but if you only wish to fund our project, you must disable that now, by clicking the link circled in this image.

You will then be able to choose any amount you would like to give to HopeMob to continue running fee-free, but it will lessen the amount of your donation to our cause. Just choose the amount (it is fine to choose zero) from this dropdown box.

5) Enter your payment information, then confirm all details are correct. It's that easy!

6) If you are donating for a prize entry in our sponsorship event, you will need to make a comment on the article with your gamertag, or the gamertag you are sponsoring (feel free to add any personal notes here as well). To do that, you will need to make a free account on HopeMob, as outlined in step 1.

And that's it! If you have any questions, feel free to ask us on twitter (@squirrelburrito, @grifballnet, @mastersundown) or by e-mail (squirrelburrito@gmail.com, or mastersundown@gmail.com)

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March Madness is here!  Go make you picks now for a chance to win 800 MSP!!

Group ID: 100584
Password: swag

Join Here

It's baaaaaaaaaack! This weekend is a Free XBox Live Gold Weekend (thanks BioShock Infinite!), and since we had so much fun last time, we're going to be running an NGA Gamertag Night starting Saturday at 9pm ET, once again going strong until, well, until we're not. We'll play whatever the community wants, with preference given to matchmaking playlists so we can show off. If you'd like to volunteer to be a party leader, leave a note in the event thread. Here's the fine print:

To participate, you must register an XBL account with the format NGA (space) whatever you want, for example: NGA Shadow. You're free to brag about your incredible tag, and you're also free to treat the night like a masquerade ball and hide behind your mask. XBL should take care of the most offensive choices for tags; don't go and pick a name directly insulting to another member of the community, or your participation may be denied. If you joined us last time, you're free to use the same account again if you'd like. If you need help making a new account, please let Squirrel or Shadow know and we'll make it happen.

Once you've registered your tag, send a FR or message to our existing group tag, NGA Grifball. That's where you'll get your party invites from. To make things interesting, if we get 16 or more unique players to participate with gamertags in the correct format, we'll set up a poll to vote for the best one, and reward the winner with a little MSP prize.

As a bonus, Microsoft will be giving away an exclusive Halo 4 avatar code to the first 600,000 people to play Halo 4 for one hour during this promotion, but only if your profile indicates you are 18 or older.  There are other bonuses in Forza Horizon and Borderlands 2, and a 30-day trial offer from Netflix too (see here for details).

Even finer print: Xbox Live Free Gold Weekend lasts from 3/8 through 3/10*. You should be able to register and use more than one account during this promotion, so if you've wanted to setup and pre-rank-up a second gamertag for one of the other... purely legitimate reasons, yes, that's it... now's your chance to do that and have a little fun with all of our NGA friends this Saturday night!

* March 8, 12:01 GMT (5:01am ET) and conclude on March 10, 23:59 GMT (4:59am ET).  You may have to change your Locale to Great Britain under your console settings in order to participate.

Discuss in our Forums

Contest Submission Deadline: March 17th, 2013

The NGA is looking for brand new grifball courts for the next season of the grifball league! This contest will focus primarily on aesthetics, as forging a grifball map doesn't require much knowledge or utilization of level design theory, though some basic principles will be required to be demonstrated.

What we're looking for:

We're looking for new and innovative designs that support a fair game of grifball. Submissions must be functional (including spawns, flat surfaces, etc.) and look professional. Maps can be forged on any of the forge locations in Halo 4 (Ravine, Impact, or Erosion). We'll be looking for creativity, as well as great designs!

Disqualification Criteria:

Map is turned in after the deadline
Map is not functional (Spawns not setup, Grifball gametype not setup)
Offensive map title or description
Stolen Map (Submissions must be from the author only)
Manipulated Map (Modded maps are not welcome for this contest)
Non-Unique Map (Maps must be new, and created for this contest. Finished designs submitted for other purposes are not acceptable)

Map Sizes:

Courts can be measured by placing a scalable object in the middle of the court (such as a safe zone or respawn zone) and changing the length and width of the object to meet the edges of the map. Submissions will be classified in the following manner:

Tiny - 26 x 24
Small - 32 x 28
Normal - 34 x 30
Large - 38 x 34
Abnormal - Unique Design

If you have a new design idea (think Blargball from Halo: Reach) that will change the court design completely, those submissions are welcome as well, and will be classified as "Abnormal".

Judging Criteria:

Each submission will be judged by a panel of 8 people. These selected persons may consist of NGA admins, Forgers, and/or grifball players. This panel will not be revealed before the submission deadline. Each judge will offer a score/rating for every map 1, 2, or 3 (Where '1' is 'Needs Work', and '3' is 'Excellent'.) We will tally all scores together, and add it to an Overall Score. At the end of the contest, the maps with the top three scores will be our winners. To see all of the judging requirements and a scorecard, click here: http://bit.ly/11uXrte. Spawns must be setup to rival the current NGA spawn style (identical to Halo: Reach style), unless your map is 'abnormal', in which spawns must work appropriately. For a resource defining how an official NGA court should be setup (Spawns, safe-zones, etc), click here: http://bit.ly/VLsAWQ. Note: Following those general requirements will aid greatly in the creation of a perfect grifball map, in case you may not be familiar with them.

Prizes:

[1st Place]
A copy of Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn on DVD.
A code worth 800 Microsoft points
Map consideration for NGA league play and tournament use
A grifball-themed avatar prop for xbox 360

[2nd Place]
A code worth 800 Microsoft points
Map consideration for NGA league play and tournament use
A grifball-themed avatar prop for xbox 360

[3rd Place]
Map consideration for NGA league play and tournament use
A grifball-themed avatar prop for xbox 360

How to Submit:

Submission link will be made available on the homepage and forums right here at Grifball.net. You will need a free account to submit your map.

Disclaimer:

The NGA reserves the right to reuse and/or rename any submissions for the use in the NGA Grifball Leagues as determined by the judges. We may request you to edit any map to comply with NGA requirements, and can edit any submissions to accommodate these requirements ourselves.

We will accept multiple submissions from a single contestant; however, we prefer quality over quantity, and each participant may only win one of the three prizes. That being said, if you've got Grifball courts in your heart and time on your hands, we'd love to see what you come up with.

All winning maps will be submitted to the matchmaking community cartographers responsible for Grifball Matchmaking, for possible inclusion into the playlist.
(Matchmaking is not controlled by the NGA, and winning is not a guarantee of inclusion.)

"Good luck, have fun, and happy forging!" - The NGA Staff

Major thanks go to Master Sundown for all his help in putting this together!

Discuss in our Forums

We will be holding a community night on Saturday at 8PM Eastern where members of the NGA will be available to share maps, tips, and the wish list of the community at large. Leave a reply with your gamertag for an invite; if you're not too familiar with grifball, it could be a great way to meet the community and get a leg up on the competition! :) Hope to see you there.

Hello everyone. I'm AwareMosquito and I'm here to tell you something that me and the rest of the IGL staff are very excited about. NEW SEASON OMG I'M SO EXCITED!!! That's right, a new IGL season coming very soon and as you can see, very excited. Signups will be starting on March 1st and running until 15th March, so there is plenty of time for you to get a team together and sign up for what will surely be a great season.

The season will begin a week later on the 22nd of March. You can get the IGL's map and game type from the file share of Recon117zwa. All the signups, discussions, results and all that will be taking place on the new IGL website. So please sign up for the site as well, it will make communication throughout the season much easier. Also, make sure to keep an eye on the front page of the IGL site as that's where most of the news will be posted, and new articles from me and the rest of the staff.

We're very excited about this and hope that you can join us for our first ever season in Halo 4 and the IGL's first season in over a year. Any questions please don't hesitate to ask me, Matt on the IGL site, AwareMosquito on Xbox live and Matt419 right here, or any of the other IGL staff. I look forward to seeing what teams sign up and we hope to make this a great experience for everyone.