IMGA 2007 awards

IMGA 2007 Nominees has been published. It's good to see positive (graphically, technically, conceptually) improvement in mobile games. Mobile games might not yet be on the same level as for example Silent Hill Origins for PSP which was what I did last weekend. Finns can read my review from Tilt.tv and others should just try it out - it is scary ;) Anyhow, it is excellent to see how mobile phone has more and more efficiently been utilized as a gaming platform.

It is also good to see an "edugame" Doggy Spanish by Come2us on the list.


That game reminded me of Vilja Helkiö's diploma work Katakana Challenge at Helsinki University of Art and Design. Katakana Challenge is a funny game to teach Japanese Katakana words.

Edugames of some sort were weird-marginal-odd sort-of-games for a long time. At first they were about mixing 60% of this (information) and 40% of that (fun) or adding some humorous twist to education. Nope, that did not worked too well. Luckily current edugames (if I can call them that?) are more about putting information into playful (fun, "gamish") frames. It works nicely as you can see from Doggy Spanish or Katakana Challenge. These types of games might be reality in some sort of education already after a couple of years!