Why mobile games missed out on BAFTA glory

The video game BAFTAs may have happened a couple of weeks ago, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten the fact that no mobile games were nominated in any of the 14 categories.

Indeed, pocket gaming as a whole wasn't particularly well represented, with only Elite Beat Agents (Use of Audio), GTA: Vice City Stories (The PC World Gamers' Award) and Cake Mania and More Brain Training (both Casual) featuring in the nominations list.

None won.

This is in contrast to previous years where there's been a dedicated handheld category, while in 2006, I-play's 24: The Mobile Game won The Gamer's Award, as sponsored by Nokia and voted for by readers of The Sun.

Intrigued, we decided to look into the reasons behind this change of affairs. After a bit of digging around, we've eventually got to the bottom of the situation.

"Mobile games were eligible for the Video Games Awards in every category rather than have a specific mobile category, as we do not have a specific category for any of the other platforms," explains Kelly Smith, BAFTA's Games Awards officer. "A couple of mobile games were entered, unfortunately none of these made it through to nomination."

It's an interesting, if odd, situation, of course, as it means mobile games now find themselves competing with blockbusters on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, not to mention the Wii's selection of motion-sensing wonders.

Smith stresses judges are told to take account of such issues. "Mobile phone games will have been judged not as comparable to PlayStation 3 games but within the controls of its platform," she points out.

We can't imagine it's an entirely ideal situation but the Games Awards remains a relatively fluid event, and Smith tells us the categories for the 2008 awards will be considered at the start of the new year, so there may yet be opportunities to tweak the format.

We suggest mobile publishers, developers, operators, distributors and aggregators make their views known.