Earlier this month we presented the winning games in the Sony Ericsson Game Developers Challenge 2004, a competition for mobile Java game developers that we have been running this year The three winners of the competition will each get a $7,000 USD cash prize, Java certification paid for by Sony Ericsson through the JavaVerified program and prominent placement on Sony Ericsson Fun & Downloads which is promoted as an integral part of the product offering.

Now we're taking a look at the companies and the people behind the winning entries.

The jury motivation for Nano Kid:

"This is an eye-candy Platform game with beautiful graphics and great personality. It is fun to play, gives a complete experience and is suitable for all target groups."

We talked to David Eriksson who is PR Manager at Pocket Panic, to find out more about the company and their experiences from the competition.

Full company name?
Pocket Panic

Basic company information
Pocket Panic is a collective brand name owned jointly by Inventive Business Technology AB, Kongotec, Fatslice and Super Panic, all based in the Stockholm area of Sweden. The creative team working with Pocket Panic has an almost extreme focus on quality, and that has given us a good reputation among both the gaming community and the industry.

     
In the absence of a picture of the happy development team at Pocket Panic, we let their Nano Kid illustrations speak for their efforts...

Year Founded?
Pocket Panic was founded in 2003.

Number of employees?
7

Only game development?
Mostly games, but also entertaining applications. For instance, we have developed a nice tool for polyphonic ringtone composing on the phone. A cool thing about that application is its community features. A user uploads his tunes from his phone to a server so that he can share them with his friends.

Only Java development?
We have professional Symbian development experience as well (UIQ and Series 60), but the combination of significantly lower production costs and the larger market for Java games has done that we haven't made a Symbian game yet. We are currently looking into BREW to be able to really enter the American market.

What is the next big thing in mobile applications?
Nobody really knows. Some say multiplayer, some say 3D, some say location-based gaming. We say fewer and better games.

About the Game Developers Challenge 2004

What made you enter the competition?
We had a finished title that was going to be ported to MIDP 2.0 anyway, so one could say that the timing was right. And of course, we saw the great opportunity to obtain both fame and glory.

How did you come up with your game idea?
We developed an acknowledged platform game back in 2002 that was good, but the lack of time in that project made us cut a few corners in order to make it in time. The list of things that we could improve wasn't very long, but we knew that these small changes would make a great impact on a new title. We aimed to make the ultimate platform game for the current population of mobile phones, and the outcome of this competition shows that we came close to target. The powerful Java performance of the Sony Ericsson K700 made it all worth our while.

What was the biggest challenge when developing for the competition?
Porting the game from our Nokia UI API version to MIDP 2.0 on the Sony Ericsson K700 actually turned out to be easier than we anticipated. And that's a good thing to learn.

What was the best part of the competition?
The announcement-of-the-winners part was good. Second to that, we would say that the community voting process exposed Pocket Panic to a wide group of fellow developers and industry insiders.

What was the worst part of the competition?
After submitting our game, we had really no control over the outcome.

What part of the prize did you value the most?
The PR aspects couldn't be overstated.

How are you going to spend the 7.000 USD cash award?
Buy a big diamond! ;-)

Pocket Panic is confirmed as speaker at Sony Ericsson's developer seminar on wireless Java at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2004 in San Francisco end-October. More>>