Finalists selected for International Mobile Gaming Awards

Attendees at the annual 3GSM World Conference in Barcelona next week will be invited to attend the grand final and winners' ceremony for the first annual International Mobile Gaming Awards.

With over 170 entrants and just four categories with a single winner in each, competition is going to be tight, as both new developers and established mobile gaming studios await the results of the final judging, with valuable publishing contracts up for grabs.

The four award categories are: Best Artwork, Best Gameplay, Best Technical Innovation and the "Grand Prix" for the overall winner, and twenty developers from around the globe have been selected as finalists by an independent panel of judges. Entrants from the UK, France, Germany, USA, China, Korea, India, The Czech Republic and the Philippines have produced demonstrable versions of new and innovative mobile games and applications, which the award sponsors and event hosts believe represents the most exciting and refreshing developments in the mobile sector.

Jesse Wijnberg at Orange, one of the many event sponsors, commented: "What we have seen from the entrants this year are some truly great concepts that not only challenge the tried and tested game genres, but deliver genuinely new, never seen before experiences to mobile gamers. As an operator, it's also good to see that commercial viability has been considered, something that often gets overlooked in the creative process. I'm really looking forward to seeing the final submissions at 3GSM."

"What's really exciting about this inaugural year for the International Mobile Gaming Awards is that we are already seeing some highly innovative and graphically advanced game concepts, at a time when the technology platform is in a period of rapid evolution," added Phil Atkin, director of strategic marketing for handheld GPUs at NVIDIA.

The IMGA panel of judges, consisting of eleven industry experts from companies including Alias, Orange, NVIDIA, Telcogames and Nokia, gathered together in November to establish a list of twenty finalists from the 170-plus developer entries. Amongst the finalists are three titles developed in the UK (Monkey Pole Climb, Snap Happy and Heli-Rescue), one of which is an entirely independently developed title.

Full details of the judging panel, the 2006 IMGA finalists and information regarding the awards ceremony can be found by visiting the official website.