Nominate your mobile or handheld game for a shot at eternal glory with the Pocket Gamer Awards 2021, which launches this week on our partner site aimed at consumers.

Since 2006, our team at PocketGamer.com has been dedicated to delivering news, reviews, tips, guides and features to inform and entertain mobile and handheld gamers around the world.

The Pocket Gamer Awards run on that site (not to be confused with our own Mobile Games Awards) reward the passion and effort that developers have poured into making games in the last year. 2020 was a difficult year at that, which makes it especially important that we now invite gamers to join together in celebrating successes across all game genres.

The process unfolds in three stages. Here’s how it works:

Step one: Nominations

The categories have been revealed and now gamers are invited to nominate their favourite game in each category. The process is also open to the industry: feel free to nominate your own product in the form over on PocketGamer.com. The categories are mostly genre based, but you can also nominate hardware products. The eligibility period is January 1st 2020 and the closing of the nomination period on January 29th 2021.

This process lasts through January and helps build the voting list. If you need inspiration, please look back through the Pocket Gamer archives. You can submit multiple nominations across multiple categories, and you are encouraged to invite your community of gamers to do so, as well as your teams. (Although please note, the team are alert to spam, and a million nominations won’t guarantee a win!)

Step two: Votes

The PocketGamer.com team will create a shortlist, based on games submitted during the nomination phase. They’ll reveal that shortlist at the start of February. Gamers then have all of February to vote on the shortlist. Once again, voting is public, and we are expecting heavy traffic. Please do point your teams and communities at that page when it’s live in February.

Step three: Winners

On 16 March 2021, the team will reveal which games have been voted top by the mobile gaming public in a live Twitch stream as well as on PocketGamer.com.

Categories

Here are the categories PocketGamer.com will be awarding this year, you’ll find the nomination form for you to submit game and hardware names at that site here.

1. Mobile Game of the Year
2. Best Mobile Developer
3. Best Mobile Publisher
4. Best Apple Arcade Game
5. Best Google Play Pass Game
6. Best Platform Game
7. Best Battle Royale Game
8. Best RPG
9. Best Puzzle Game
10. Best Sports Game
11. Best Action Game
12. Best Strategy Game
13. Best Simulation Game
14. Best AR Game
15. Most Innovative Game
16. Best Gaming Accessory
17. Best Gaming Phone
18. Best Gaming Tablet
19. Best Educational Game
20. Best Racing Game
21. Best Shooter
22. Best Game Narrative
23. Best Multiplayer Game
24. Best Mobile Conversion
25. Best Digital Board Game
26. Best Game We're Still Playing
27. Best Hypercasual 'Quick Play' Game

There’s also an induction into the Hall Of Fame category, an honour which will be dished out by the consumer journalists on the PocketGamer.com editorial team, led by Dann Sullivan.

Products are eligible if they were released between January 1st 2020 and the closing of the nomination period on January 29th 2021. Once again, this is a different set of categories to our own Mobile Games Awards which rewards behind-the-scenes industry talent, and will return later this year.

Biggest and best

Dann Sullivan, editor of PocketGamer.com, says, "The video games industry is growing bigger and bigger each year, and mobile games are at the heart of that. By bringing back our Pocket Gamer Awards we're giving the gaming masses a chance to celebrate and commend the games that have helped shape the industry, and given the players respite during the whirlwind that was 2020."

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