RIM has once again proved how excited
it is to engage its developer community.This time, it is promising rewards upon rewards to a lot of developers, ranging from Blackberry hardware, marketing opportunities to even hard cash! Recently, the Canadian giant announced that it was going to organise one day Port-a-thon events all across Asia to allow developers from iOS and Android ecosystems to port their games to Blackberry’s platform or help new developers create them from scratch. The cities this event will be held are as follows, accompanied with the corresponding dates:
- 3 Dec – Bangkok, Thailand
- 5 Dec – Sydney, Australia
- 6 Dec – Singapore
- 10 Dec – Bandung, Indonesia
- 12 Dec – Hyderabad, India
- 14 Dec – Mumbai, India
- 22 Dec – Hong Kong
To know more about each of the event being held in your city, you can check the event website here. There will be a lot of Blackberry experts and gaming personalities present at the event along with the RIM executives, as is the case with most such hacking events, which are a good way to take a dive into the community and get to know the people involved. There are also expected to be a lot of sessions on learning the tips and tricks and nuances of Blackberry app development. The surprising aspect however, is the sudden focus on game development, which Blackberry users always have felt a need for a long time due to the fact that most of the platform has been focused towards business users until now. This makes it clear that at least the gaming experience is going to change in a significant way. For good or for bad – that is yet to be seen. The press release also mentions the details about rewards and recognition programmes as follows :
Get onsite rewards when you port and build on BlackBerry 10:
- Successfully port a game app onsite, and receive a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (limit to one per vendor ID)
- Top Arcade, Puzzle and Action games ported onsite receive one BlackBerry DevAlpha device each
Get rewards with submission of App World approved game apps:
- Get a game app approved on App World, and receive USD$100 for every eligible app for up to 20 apps
- Be the first ten for your city to get at least 5 and up to 10 game apps approved on App World, and receive a BlackBerry 10 Developer Alpha device
- Be the first for your city to get >10 game apps approved on App World, and get a paid trip to BlackBerry Jam Europe on top of the above rewards!
Get featured on BlackBerry App World:
- All successfully ported and approved games will get one (1) week of App World Marketing across APAC, Middle East and Africa, where applicable.
- All vendors who submit more than 5 games will get an exclusive marketing feature where games would be showcased under a partner branded or co-branded banner on App World for 1 week across APAC, Middle East and Africa, where applicable.
Are you going to the event to grab these rewards? Let us know in the comments.
