Marseille, France – The nominees for the 9th Annual International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) have been announced. 52 different countries were represented by the 600 games submitted. This year with the expertise of 15 jury members consisting of both press and industry leaders, 57 games were nominated in six different categories and will move on to the final round of judging.
IMGA founder Maarten Noyons was particularly impressed by the submissions. “This year’s submissions have been quite exceptional,” he said. “We have never seen such a broad spectrum of games in the submissions. The jury reviewed hard core triple-A games, poetic indie games, educational games and a significant number of narrative games. Developers worldwide are bringing ever-increasing standards of quality and originality to gamers across the globe, and all 57 nominees are worth playing.”
The categories have changed from last year and are the following:
* Excellence in Innovation, given to the games that utilize technology or gameplay in new and exciting ways
* Excellence in Visuals, for the games that went above and beyond in the graphics department
* Excellence in Gameplay, an award that celebrates the games whose core game mechanics kept us coming back for more and didn’t allow us to put the game down
* Excellence in Storytelling, for the stories that pulled us in beyond the gameplay itself
* Best Social Game, the game we keep playing with our friends or through social networks
* Best Serious Game, for titles where a game was used to bring attention to a specific topic or brought gaming mechanics to an activity or learning process. These could be educational, historical, political, or even health focused
The People’s Choice award, which is voted by the general public, enables anyone to vote for his or her favorite game by visiting IMGA online. On March 28th winners within all categories will be announced at the awards ceremony held in San Francisco. The winners will receive over 1 million Euros of free television advertising across Germany, courtesy of ProSiebenSat.1 Games.
The nominations for each category are as follows:
Excellence in Visuals:
* Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders (Atypical Games)
* ARC Squadron (Psyonix)
* Ravensword: Shadowlands (Crescent Moon Games)
* The Act (Chillingo Ltd)
* Anomaly Korea (Chillingo Ltd)
* Walking Dead: The Game (Telltale Inc)
* Lili (BitMonster, Inc)
* The Room (Fireproof Games)
* Horn (Phosphor Games)
* Need for Speed Most Wanted (Electronic Arts)
Excellence in Innovation:
* Bad Piggies (Rovio Entertainment Ltd)
* The Grading Game (mode of expression, LLC)
* Knights of Pen & Paper (Behold Studios Jogos Eletronicos LTDA ME)
* Zumbie (Jonatan Van Hove)
* Arranger (Ayopa Games LLC)
* Beat Sneak Bandit (Simogo)
* TAISO (Zacozaco)
* The Room (Fireproof Games)
* Spaceteam (Henry Smith)
* Zombies, Run! (Six to Start)
Excellence in Game Play:
* Spell Sword (Everplay)
* Puzzle Craft (Chillingo Ltd)
* Anomaly Korea (Chillingo Ltd)
* Triple Town (Spry Fox, LLC)
* Waking Mars (Tiger Style)
* Beat Sneak Bandit (Simogo)
* Devil’s Attorney (1337 Game Design AB)
* Rayman Jungle Run (Ubisoft)
* Angry Birds Star Wars (Rovio Entertainment Ltd)
* Fairway Solitaire by Big Fish (Big Fish Games, Inc)
Excellence in Story Telling:
* Bastion (Warner Bros)
* Hollywood Monsters (Bulkypix and Pendulo Studios)
* GHOST TRICK: Phantom Detective (Capcom)
* The Act (Chillingo Ltd)
* Waking Mars (Tiger Style)
* The Room (Fireproof Games)
* Yesterday (Bulkypix)
* Zombies, Run! (Six to Start)
* Devil’s Attorney (1337 Game Design AB)
* Walking Dead: The Game (Telltale Inc)
Best Social Game:
* Candy Crush Saga (King.com)
* Quizboard (Planeto AB)
* Happy Street (Godzilab)
* Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment)
* Clash of Clans (Supercell)
* Letterpress – Word Game (atebits)
* YOU DON’T KNOW JACK (Jellyvision Games, Inc)
* Outwitters (One Man Left)
* SongPop (FreshPlanet Inc)
* Draw Something (OMGPOP)
Best Serious Game:
* Loop Raccord (Plural Games)
* The Grading Game (mode of expression, LLC)
* In a Permanent Save State (Mr Benjamin Poynter)
* Equator (Tigerface games)
* Zombies, Run! (Six to Start)
* Battle of the Bulge (Shenandoah Studio)
* DragonBox (WeWantToKnow AS)
The competition is now the mobile entertainment industry’s leading showcase for groundbreaking innovations, displaying exceptional quality and new trends in mobile entertainment, whether the games are made for the iPhone, for Android Phones, Windows Mobile, Bada (Samsung), BREW MP, for Blackberry, WebOS, J2ME, Flash, HTML5 or any other widely spread Operating System for mobile handsets. Games for tablets, handheld consoles, netbooks and pocket PC’s are not eligible if they are not available for mobile phones.
The IMGA were launched in 2004 with the support of Autodesk, Criterion, Euromediterranee, Fathammer, Ideaworks 3D, Iomo, Intel, Nokia, NVIDIA and Orange. During the last eight years the IMGA have reviewed more than 1,500 mobile games originating from over 52 countries including the USA, Ukraine, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, China, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Belgium. Participants include PhD students, researchers, artists, individual developers and the top 10 leading mobile games publishers and developers in the world. Copyright (C) 2013 IMGA. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
