Arabnet Arabnet

Arabic social game portal and game distribution and monetization platform GameTako announced today the winning entries of its “Game Zanga” game development weekend and competition. The prizes awarded to the participants exceeded $15,000, in addition to a special prize courtesy of Unity Technologies for the highest rated game made with the Unity game engine.

GameTako awarded the prizes based on the verdict from a panel of judges in addition to GameTako user voting. The judging panel represented Arab game specialist media outlets: Online Games Shack, Saudi Gamer, True-Gaming, Maxforums, NG4A and Z-pad.net. The panel rated the 15 participating games based on five criteria: Gameplay, originality, theme, graphics and sound.

In addition to the main prizes, GameTako also offered best-in-category prizes as incentives for the most original game, best graphics, best sound and most humorous game. The company also offered a prize for the most helpful person during the Zanga in order to encourage a culture of sharing among Arab game developers. GameTako awarded bonus points to participating teams for writing blog posts about their experiences developing games, posting time-lapse videos of their progress, in addition to bonus points for teams that shared their game’s source code with the community.

“We would like to express gratitude to everyone who made Game Zanga a success. A big thank you goes to the participating game developers for the genuine effort they put during the 48 hours of the Zanga. We hope that it was a great learning experience for them and we encourage them to continue work on their games beyond the Zanga.” Said Abdullah Hamed, Founder and CEO of GameTako.

The winning entries for the main prizes are as follows:

• Grand Prize ($5,000): 3atel ilal 3amal (Gird Games, Jordan)
• First Prize ($3,000): Jame3 Jame3 3D (Team Wizards, Jordan)
• Second Prize ($2,000): Raasein Fil 7alal (Ali Mohammed Ali, Egypt)
• Third Prize ($1,000): Moving Recipes with Bakeeza Allazeeza (Kharabeesh, Jordan)
• Unity Prize (one perpetual Unity Pro license): Jame3 Jame3 3D (Team Wizards, Jordan)

More details about prize winners can be found in GameTako’s website (Arabic).

Following the success of the event, GameTako plans to hold a second Game Zanga in June 2012. More details will be announced on the Game Zanga website.