Officially dubbed an app accelerator program, there's undoubtedly a competitive element to social gaming platform PapayaMobile's latest venture The Games Academy.

For starters, rather than simply throwing its weight behind those developers inducted – studios being afforded office space, input from 'industry veterans' and legal advice – Papaya will actually choose a winning title, with a guaranteed 100,000 downloads their reward.

Playing with Papaya

"There is a huge shift taking place in the mobile games industry over to the freemium business model and social games," said CEO Si Shen of the venture.

"The Games Academy provides resources to help developers build and monetise social games using our Social Games Engine, a proven platform for developing the highest quality mobile social games, The Games Academy is not an incubator and will not take any ownership in the developers or any of their games."

Indeed, Papaya won't be providing any financial backing for the studios it takes on board, but will house them in the Parisoma Innovations Loft located in San Francisco for four months, as well as granting them the opportunity to pitch their businesses at venture capitalists.

The studios in question will be 2-3 person affairs working on iOS or Android titles, and Papaya will even allow entrants to attend the lessons on offer virtually rather than in person if the west coast of the US is too far to travel.

Those looking to apply are advised to visit the newly launched Games Academy website.

[source: PapayaMobile]