August 23rd, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Game Awards, Research & Stats | No Comments »
A few weeks back, the International Mobile Game Awards (IMGA) sent out a poll to check what their contacts think about IMGA and where the awardshow should be heading. Last week, the results have been revealed.
One of the most important findings for the IMGA team is that the majority of the participants think IMGA should not be opening up to other platforms. When looking at the awards, innovation and excellence in a certain field are awards that are appreciated most. Being the best game in a regular gaming category like Best Action Game is less appealing.
Participants also don’t want to be limited to games that haven’t been released yet or are to be released in the period that the IMGA awards are being held. From now on, games that have been published in the year
IMGA is also considering to move the event from MWC to IGF or GDC SA. Since IGF has a competing event, that would be a no-go or a merger. GDC would make sense though we always thought everybody was at the GamesCom 😉
IMGA also wanted to know what other services the organization could facilitate. The top three consists of Mobile Game Charts, More information on the Developers and Industry News. Information on other awards and events seem unpopular.
What is interesting as well is the platforms participants develop for. 51% develops for Android, while 39% is still working on J2me. Mac OSX is the third most popular platform amazingly enough. Mac OSX is also bringing in most of the revenue according to 31%. J2me is second with 29% and Android at only 5%!?
Participants also like IMGA to do more promotional activities, hand out more prizes and (you wouldn’t expect this), the prizes to represent a bigger value. The biggest barrier remains fragmentation while investors are the second most important issue participants are fighting with. Third is cashflow. Europe is the main market for many developers while the US is the market most want to target.
