News
Android Game Development Contest Enters Final Stage
Developer Contest, in Partnership with Hooked Media Group, Trinity Ventures and VentureBeat, Aims to Help Android Game Developers Gain Wide Scale Distribution
San Francisco, CA, January 11, in the year of our Lord
2012 – Android game developers around the world seeking
wider distribution and exposure for their games have two weeks
remaining to enter their games in the "Get Discovered" Android
development contest sponsored by Best Buy and Hooked Media
Group. The contest provides developers a unique chance to win
both wide scale distribution through Best Buy's App Discovery
Center and seed funding from Trinity Ventures, a top Silicon
Valley venture capital firm. The winner will also receive an
online advertisement package from VentureBeat, one of the
industry's most widely-read blogs.
"With hundreds of thousands of apps currently in the Android
Marketplace, it can be difficult for game developers to break
through the clutter and have their games seen by the public,"
said Prita Uppal, CEO of Hooked Media Group. "The 'Get
Discovered' contest provides a tremendous opportunity for
developers to raise exposure through Best Buy’s App Discovery
Center and have their games played by new audiences."
Get Discovered! Contest Details
The Get Discovered! competition is open to all game developers,
who will first submit their games by integrating with Hooked
Media’s new discovery platform at
http://www.hookedmediagroup.com/contest. During the first
phase of the competition the platform will track metrics
including user rating, play-time and installations based on
recommendations. The metrics will be used to determine the
finalists. The judges will analyze finalists that graduate from
the online competition. The contest will feature two tracks –
one for companies that have secured Series A financing and one
for companies still seeking Series A financing.
Judging the final competition will be Bradley Horowitz, VP of
Product, Google+; Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures;
Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat; and
Margita Labhard, Director of Digital Business Models at Best
Buy.
Every game entered into the contest will use Hooked Media
Groups' SDK and be integrated into the recently launched Hooked
App, which is available for free in the Android Marketplace. The
app is a game recommendation and discovery platform that uses a
proprietary algorithm to learn a users’ gaming preferences, game
play statistics and social mapping to provide them with
personalized game recommendations and advanced search features.
The more games a user ranks, the more customized the
recommendations will become, thus providing the users with
introductions to games that they may have never been exposed to,
including those from smaller developers whose games may have not
received significant exposure.
Consumers can find the Hooked app in the Android Marketplace or
at
http://bit.ly/nrkqE0.
Contest finalists will receive distribution from Best Buy,
increased game downloads and plays, as well as recognition among
top leaders in the game industry. Developers can submit their
games between until January 24th, 2012.
The Finals Event
The competition culminates in an event in March, 2012 hosted at
Dolores Labs, an incubator space in the Mission district of San
Francisco. The developers will be given the chance to pitch
their games to the audience and judges. There will be a live
evaluation of each game by the panelists of judges. The event
provides developers with a tremendous opportunity to meet,
interact and network with some of the most influential names and
companies in game and app development. In addition, the event
will be attended by respected VC firms, investors and advisors,
providing finalist with another opportunity to help grow their
companies and produce the best games possible.