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Our top 10 offbeat industry awards of 2011

Celebrating the other side of the biz

Our top 10 offbeat industry awards of 2011
As we prepare to walk under Janus' arch once again, let's take some time for a detour along a road less travelled...

Welcome to our offbeat top 10 of mobile gaming. In no particular order...

10. Job in the mobile games industry everyone wanted in 2011

It's been suggested that being a RIM co-CEO - or perhaps just its CEO (what a thought) - would have been such a job, but we think that's confusing 'wanted' with 'no-one could do a worse job than those two chumps'.

Instead, the award goes to Rovio's Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka, who has travelled around the world, seemingly saying whatever comes into his head - and having it all faithfully published by the world's press.

9. Lazarus award for the biggest comeback

There's a broad argument amongst commentators that after some hard years - and perhaps in contrast to RIM's continued decline - Nokia's performance during 2011 has demonstrated resurrection qualities.

Device sales, even of Windows Phones, nor the company's financials or share price are yet going in the right direction though.

Therefore, we'll hedge our bets and give the award to Nokia's Lumia 800 phone, which is a lovely piece of consumer electronics design that matches the best of Apple and Samsung.

8. The coolest name in mobile games industry

Will anyone ever beat Giordano Bruno Contestabile, PopCap's franchise business director?

PopCap's PR executive Ember Wardrop runs him close.

7. Richard Feynman award for the communication of complex topics to stupid people

There are lots of clever people in the mobile games industry, and us stupid people do well to learn from them.

Peter Farago, and the other number crunchers from Flurry did an excellent job with a regular supply of blog posts; similarly matched by the clever people at Distimo.

We're also keen to see how Fiksu's App Store Competitive Index and its Cost per Loyal User Index develop in 2012. CEO Micah Adler used to be an associate computer science professor don't you know.

But when it comes to combining hardcore data with pretty pictures, the clear winner in the arty brainaic states is asymco's Horace Dediu.

6. Best dressed person in mobile games industry during 2011

A hard fought category with Miniclip's Antonio Sergio Varanda and Fabrication Games' Tommy Palm in the runner up positions.

But the winner is Helsinki entrepreneur Ilkka Paananen. Very smooth.

5. Cordon Bleu award for best event catering

The quality of conference food has been steadily improving, and it's often the smaller, local events that manage to outshine their international rivals.

As ever, the food at UK Tandem Events was remarked upon, notably its London-based Evolve and Liverpool Develop events.

Keith particularly enjoyed the "great roast pork" served at the latter.

4. Chatterbox award for the top tweeter of 2011

A highly competitive category, there are dozens of industry figures who have nothing better to do with their time than tell us when they've gone on a run or checked into Starbucks for coffee.

Of course, not. Great debates, generally silliness and breaking news are all wrapped up into waves of communication, providing an invaluable community and journalistic resource.

In the running for 2011 were: Andrew John Smith @SpiltMilkStudio; Giordano Bruno Contestabile @giordanobc, Noel Llopis @noel_llopis, CHIEF WONKA @millsustwo, and Will Luton @will_luton.

The winner, however, for the combination of quality, quantity and sheer rudeness is @TheKevinDent.

3. Best mobile games conference talk of 2011

We spent a lot of time at conferences in 2011, but that time wasn't wasted. We learned stuff. But what were the best talks you ask? And we're glad you did.

PapayaMobile's Oscar Clark scored highly with talks at GDC Europe and Develop Liverpool, as did Zynga With Friends' Vijay Thakkar at GDC Online and the main GDC conference.

Demonstrating great minds thinking alike were App Ent's Steven Sargent and Fishlabs' Marc Hehmeyer. Both gave talks about developing games for Android, spending the vast majority of their time and ire on what a terrible platform it was to develop games on. Those talks were at GDC Online and GDC Europe respectively.

There were also gems from smaller conferences. Epic's Mark Rein started the flow of detailed information about the success of Infinity Blade at the Go Go Games conference in Gateshead, while Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins' gave a great keynote about how the browser will beat the app store at AppNation.

But the best talk of the 2011 was a relatively spontaneous rant at GDC Online with ex-id Software and Apple developer Graeme Devine arguing, "Our focus on metrics and monetisation is killing mobile games".

2. Best giveaways of 2011

Always a hard fought prize, there were pretty of goodies on offer for the conference attendee in 2011. Google was up to its usual business at GDC with tablets and Chrome books handed out, while RIM did similar with its PlayBook Tablet at its DevCon Americas.

Nokia's PR team pulled out the stops for Nokia World in London, laying on a personalised service of favourite books, food, drinks and films, alongside Angry Birds plushes, Nokia bath ducks, branded pens, pads, bags and watches to press attendees.

Top marks, however, are awarded to Google for its collectible Android badges at Mobile World Congress. I still wear my pink suited robot with pride.

1. Best party of 2011

There were plenty of excellent parties in 2011, surprisingly most of them thrown by Pocket Gamer. What can we say? We're just social guys.

We had a great time at the start of the year at Mobile World Congress (with sponsors Papaya and Exent), at GDC including the Pocket Gamer awards (with sponsors Tap.Me, Papaya and FreeAppADay), two parties at WWDC (with Glu Mobile, and W3i), and at GDC Online with W3i and Papaya.

But the best was our GDC European event. Held with Papaya and SponsorPay in the gothic shadow of Koln cathedral, we wore silly hats, got given padlocks and wrote things on iPads.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.