developers

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

Show your support for the Playyoo community and receive some cool stuff.Publish one of our contest banners to your web site, blog, or community page, and you’ll receive a Playyoo kit consisting of a Playyoo t-shirt, cap, mouse pad, and more.

If you’d like to receive the kit, simply publish one of the Playyoo contest banners below (we’ve got 140×140 and 180×180, both jpg and png) and send an e-mail with the link to talk@playyoo.com.

Bill Perry recently updated the Flash Lite device spreadsheet. There are now 60 commercially available Nokia mobile devices, 36 Sony-Ericsson, and 13 BREW devices that have some version of Flash Lite installed (as of November 5). You can access the updated spreadsheet (in PDF) here

As previously mentioned in “Flash Lite UG Members - you’ve got a whole new way to win,” we’re sponsoring (along with Adobe and O’Reilly) a second contest exclusively for members of regional Flash Lite User Groups. Thursday marked the official launch of the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest - visit the Mobile Game Contest website for all the details.

The site features a contest page managed by each regional section: EMEA , Americas, and Asia Pacific. You can also post technical and general questions, and participate in discussions with other UG members on the site’s forum boards.

And remember- you must upload your game by Feb 15, 2008 to be eligible for the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest.

We’re now in week two of the Playyoo Game Contest, and if $25,000 wasn’t enough to generate some excitement with Flash developers, we’ve got a second contest going — this time with the Flash Lite User Groups. It’s called the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest. We’re offering an additional $15,000 in cash prizes and our friends at Adobe and O’Reilly are chipping in other great prizes (Adobe software, anyone?) exclusively to members of regional Flash Lite User Groups.

If you were at Adobe Max in Chicago last week, you may have heard Giorgio Natili announce the contest in the Mobile Device UG session, and he’ll be talking about it again in Barcelona on Oct 17.

So how does it work? As a member of a Flash Lite User Group, you can specify your UG regional section (Americas, Europe and Africa, Asia Pacific) when you create an account at Playyoo. Your games will automatically be entered in the Playyoo Game Contest, as well as submitted for consideration in your regional section. So with little to no extra work on your part, you’ve got a whole other way to win.

Each regional section will be run by a contest leader selected from the regional Flash User Groups and will maintain a page on the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest website, www.mobilecontest.org.

The winners of the regional sections of the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest will be selected by a panel of judges comprised of representatives from Playyoo and Adobe, as well as leading Flash Lite game developers worldwide. So while the judging of the Playyoo Games Contest is strictly democratic, the UG contest will be judged by experts based on innovation in concept, game-play graphics, and the technical merits of the game – like memory optimization and loading times.

The prizes for each of the 3 regional sections of the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest are:

• 1st prize: A prize of YOUR choice valued up to $5,000 USD
• 2nd prize: Adobe software licenses
• 3rd prize: O’Reilly books

And stay tuned in, as we’ll be announcing additional prizes as time goes on. As for the other nuts and bolts: games must be uploaded to the Playyoo website before 23:59 CET February 15, 2008 to be eligible for consideration, and you can submit as many games as you wish.

Check out www.mobilecontest.org for more details on the rules and regulations for theUG contest.

If you’re unlucky enough to get the message “sorry, your phone is not compatible with Playyoo” when you try out our preview site, we really are sorry. Playyoo requires a phone which supports the new Flash Lite technology from Adobe, and although this supported by more and more mobile phones, so far the majority of phones, especially older ones, are not compatible.

So, if we know this, why did we choose to bet on Flash Lite? Well, Flash Lite allows us to do some very cool things. More to the point, is allows us to let YOU do some very cool things, as you will discover when we launch in December. The only real alternative technology, Java, is simply not in the same league. Sure, people create great games in Java, but they take a huge investment in time and education.

Flash Lite is building a momentum. Adobe is fully behind it – Adobe was a principal sponsor of this year’s major mobile phone tradeshow, 3GSM, and this alone is a clear indication of how seriously they take the market. Back in March, when we decided to go with Flash Lite, maybe 1 in 20 phones in use in Europe and USA were compatible. Now it is closer to 1 in 10. In the Far East the situation is considerably better.

So if your phone doesn’t work, what can you do about it? Well, to be honest, not so much. Phones are not PCs. You cannot, in general add a Flash player to your phone. Note that while you might find a Flash Lite player you can install, doing it this way in almost all cases will not help, because the phone’s operating software will not be aware of it. The only way in which you can upgrade your phone to support Flash Lite is through a firmware upgrade, and let’s be honest, few phone manufacturers bother much with these, except in extreme circumstances, and even fewer customers apply them. And why should they? It’s a phone, not a PC, and only too often they’ve see what “upgrades” do to their PCs.

So what is the solution? Well, the best thing is to check with your operator and see if you qualify for a free upgrade. At the moment, the safest bet is to choose a Nokia phone, but you can also check various resources (see our FAQ) for a list of supported devices. We’ll be adding a lot more resources on this topic soon.

Actually, if your phone doesn’t work, you’re in good company – my personal phone, a very nice Sony Ericsson K810i, doesn’t either! By the time we go live in December I’ll be making sure have a Flash Lite enabled phone – I hope you can to!