In 1973 people took notice of a film called American Graffiti and of course George Lucas. 30+ years later, look where is he now… Could the same be true for the new minds in video games?

Well, if you think mainstream media doesn’t cover Independent Games… Watch SPIKE TV Friday at 12:30am when MOUNTAIN DEW Presents THE NEXT GREAT GAME GODS (HD where available). We cover the 4 nominated games for Best Independent Game at the SPIKE 2008 VIDEO GAME AWARDS. We won’t know who wins until Sunday Night when the 2008 SPIKE VIDEO GAME AWARDS begin LIVE at 9pm. So first, find out who they are and what drives them!

In this special, Geoff Keighley travels the world (from Tokyo to San Fran and Seattle) to meet the people behind the most successful Indie Games of 08. And he finds out exact what it takes to get into the Gaming Industry.

Plus, we meet up with the minds who’ve already sewn their oats… Will Wright (being coined Gamer God this Sunday at the VGAs), Blizzard’s Michael Morhaime and Frank Pearce, and the founder of DigiPen, Claude Comair, the first university to offer a degree in video games.

MEET THE NOMINEES:
Dylan Cuthbert, started programming his own games at age 10. Now we can thank him for the successful PIXELJUNK series, most recently EDEN (AND he World Premieres Q-Games’ next venture in this SHOW!!).

Dylan Fitterer, gave away a free game a week at BestGameEver.com. And then one game sparked an idea: AUDIOSURF.

David Hellman got a call from Jonathan Blow, who was on his way of putting $180K into his new venture ‘BRAID,’ and asked David to help finish the project.

Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel from 2DBoy left EA to take a chance, and create a whole WORLD OF GOO. A Metaphorical-Physi-DAMN-Goo-ood Game!

PLUS! We hear from your favorite experts in the industry… Jeff Gerstmann (Giant Bomb), N’Gai Croal, (Newsweek) Stephen Totilo (MTV News) and Eric Zimmermann (Gamelab).