Contest News

Hi, thanks for dropping by. If you are interested in a lively community around mobile casual games why not register to play, score and make friends. Please go to http://www.playyoo.com/common/registration.html

I’m happy to present Samir K. Dash and his game “Match the Blocks”, that won the Playyoo Launch Contest. I played this game myself and I can tell you the current highscore is incredible.

About Samir

Samir currently works as System Consultant (Creative Content) leading an e-learning & multimedia team at Enterprise System Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (www.esspl.com) at Bhubaneswar, India. He is passionate about Flash, Flash Lite and has developed few applications, games and components for web and mobiles. He runs his experimental Flash Lite based mobile greetings site MobileWish. He beliefs “ Flash Lite will fuel the nexgen M-Learning through usage of mobile interactives and games. Playyoo’s contribution towards bringing together the Flash Lite community and spreading the awareness among common mass has turned this chain reaction, ON.” More details about Samir can be found at his blog MobileWish. He beliefs “ Flash Lite will fuel the nexgen M-Learning through usage of mobile interactives and games. Playyoo’s contribution towards bringing together the Flash Lite community and spreading the awareness among common mass has turned this chain reaction, ON.” More details about Samir can be found at his blog http://samirshomepage.wordpress.com

The Interview

As part of our feature of fine game creators we are going to have short interviews and provide them via Podcast here. I actually did a Skype interview with Samir but unfortunately the sound quality is rather bad. Still I will investigate how to improve it and post it later if I succeed.So we rather print the interview here.

How did you become a Flash Lite developer?
It was back in 1997, when I found a copy of a promotional CD from a digit magazine with Flash 5 trial copy, I started experimenting with it and gradually realized this software has everything that turns on my imagination. Later I started self learning Flash and followed every version until (two, three years back) I came to know that they have launched a mobile profile too. My interest raised further knowing that I can see my little animations on mobile handsets. My first Flash Lite application was “Traffic Signs” in Flash Lite 1.0 — which was nothing but a pack of slides of traffic sign images in each frame. Later when I joined ESSPL and started using Flash for client projects, I found out that Flash Lite can be used to create “Value Additions” to some of enterprise/web applications other teams are developing – like a mobile companion to any of the application that are being developed in Java/.Net , that will show some information on handsets – Rss gadgets, string/XML parsers etc. Thus I got my passion for Flash lite.

You are interested in casual games, tell us why?
Most of the jobs in my current company involve development of interactive and e-learning stuff and that’s the main reaso. When I view Flash Lite games, I see it as a medium to keep the user engaged deeply for some minutes. I belief, the causal games are the only robust way to guide the instructional designs of a next generation M-Learning.. That’s is the main reason I was first attracted to wards this area. I believe causal mobile games are the next big thing both in game as well as M-Learning industry.

Tell us how you came up with idea for this game?
“Match the Blocks” is perhaps the simplest game in the series of ten games I contributed to Playoo. I believe, that in most of the cases if it is a mobile game, there is a high chance that the user may not be in a situation where he can concentrate more on game playing…like he might be downloading the game while waiting for cab, or ordering a meal at restaurant. So the idea is to keep the game playing rules simple, so much time is not wasted by the user in learning “How to/what to do” about the game. Additionally more the complicated a game is , less chance, the user will be able to find sufficient time and attention for it to play on handset. So, I created “Match the Blocks” keeping in all these things in mind, and those things worked very well too.

What other games do you like on Playyoo?
I think there are many brilliant games in Playyoo. To name a few — QTile, Mondo Under, Panic Mechanic, Orang Bunian, these are few names of some brilliant games I liked at playyoo. Qtile is very technically sound design in game , Mondo Under is a wonderful piece in graphic effects, Panic mechanic has a good entertaining factor and Orang Bunian is a very simple but beautiful game.

What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on 3 casual games for playyoo, one of them is “Bhul Bhuleya” based on a new concept. I am sure the user will like the gaming experience of that very much. The second one is a Flash lite 3 game, and the third one is a version 2 of “Match the Blocks” . Apart from games I am also working on a m-learning stuff that will I hope make m-learning easier to implement in Flash Lite.

What do you think Playyoo can offer to you as a developer?
<Playyoo has done a wonderful job in bringing together the Flash Lite developers and the game players. I think it’s very important for Playyoo to improve this synergy factor. Most of the developers would be more interested if Playyoo can create a potential market for them to showcase their games and interactive for commercial benefits.I also wish that Playyoo can push the M-Learning related interactive development, which can actually redefine the whole concept of learning using Flash Lite games for students – as games are much more effective than pure texts. As I said earlier the next big thing both in game as well as M-Learning industry lies in causal games /interactive development.

Do have an advice for other game creators how to win a contest likethis one.
The specialty of Playyoo contest was that unlike other game development contests held in previous years, it is based on the concept of “for the game players”…the judging criteria was more on “user’s preference in gaming” – with in 300 kb one need to bring the entertaining factor and has to keep a balance between the technology and the taste. Many games that were brilliantly designed and technically sound may fail in these type of contests if users can not see it as per what they expect from this. The key is to keep a balance between the technical potential and the gaming factor. And yes it is always good to make the game small so users won’t need to wait too long, make it FL 1.1 (because the more users can play it on their handset), don’t make the game rules complex…make it simple and short…and I am sure the game will gate more users.

Thanks for the interview and your games.

So we are now at the conclusion of our first major contest on Playyoo! Between the launch of the preview site last October, and the cut off date of 15 Feb, 356 user games had been created and uploaded by Playyoo members from all over the world, making this easily the largest collection of free Flash Lite games online. There are some really fantastic games within Playyoo, and some of them perhaps have had less attention than they deserve. Other great games were uploaded too late to build enough popularity to win.We’d very much like to thank all who expressed their passion and trust by becoming a member of our community and contributed games. You’ve all played a key part in getting our vision for a mobile casual games community off the ground.We would particularly like to thank Samir Dash for his generous gesture in declining multiple prizes, thus allowing us to extend prizes to the top 12.

About the results
The results are based only on community activity. From various measures, we derive a “game popularity index”. The algorithm for this has been enhanced over time to improve the fairness and balance. Clearly, game quality is a big factor in winning, but so is engagement with the community, and finding ways to promote games. The game popularity index will be also used in forthcoming new and improved game selection features.

The Winners are:

1. Match the Blocks a game by Samir won $10,000
2. The Empty Space a game by Loomand won $7,000
3. Panic Mechanic a game by marc won $3,000
4. qTile a game by ptm won $1,500
5. Ludo Cells a game by Samir (Samir generously declined his prize for this game)
6. Mr. Shooti a game by Roozbeh won $1,000
7. Think Fast a game by izam won $500
8. Bog Frog a game by Ekleptica won $500
9. Fill Board a game by Samir (Samir generously declined his prize for this game)
10. SokoLite a game by ptm won $500
11. Orang Bunian a game by Faisal Arbain won $500
12. Sketch Mini a game by santoki won $500
13. Sushi Mushi Mania a game by marc
14. Mondo Under a game by bitacora13
15. The Bee Game a game by lfons
16. UFO Catcher: Barnyard Abduction a game by Naz
17. Sea Combat a game by Mariam Dholkawala
18. Trop Tris a game by CreativeSource
19. Mr. Cease Fire a game by HungamaMobile
20. Shark-Thrasher a game by digitallamb

For further info please go to the contest page.

Portraying the Winners and other high quality game creators
During the next days we will profile to the community the fine people that created the winning games. Short podcasts or transcripts will be made available on Playyoo blog.

And it’s not quite over yet!
Further prizes will be awarded under the banner of the 2007 Flash Lite game contest. A panel of judges including representatives from Adobe’s Flash Lite team is currently evaluating entries. Results will be announced soon.We hope that everybody has enjoyed participating in this contest as much as we did running it. Remember, these are just the first steps. We want to make Playyoo a key resource for Flash Lite developers for many reasons, and we hope you will all help and support us in reaching this goal.Keep your games coming!

As you might know our contest will end in roughly a week. I was curious and had a look on the leaderboard and I took a snapshot to figure out if anything is going to change within the next days.Here is the intermediate result:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Thanks again to Samir for your generosity. That move from Samir explains the strange annotations on the snapshot.

There is still one week to go for entries in the contest, and things are heating up. Samir, who is also behind Mobile Wish, offering an innovative Flash Lite greetings application, and who has dominated so far, has made a very generous offer to relinquish all prizes except his top one.

A look at the leaderboard shows that a late entry, The Empty Space, from loomand, is demonstrating that it’s not over ’til it’s over.

So keep them coming!

It’s amazing how quickly time flies. The Playyoo Game Contest is in full swing, and we’re just a few short weeks away from the deadline. To be clear:

• You have up to February 15 to submit a game & be eligible for the contest
• Winners will be determined based on popularity and community activity as of February 28

Haven’t submitted your game yet? Don’t despair- you have until February 15th. But remember, winners are determined by community activity (i.e. number of times played, number of people who have recommended or marked it as a favorite). So, if you still want to enter your creations (whether they’re created with Game Creator or your own design skills), you might want to come up with a creative marketing & self-promotion campaign to go along with it. Encourage friends, family, anyone to download, play, and recommend. After all, if your mom marks your game as a favorite, it’s not against any of our rules.