Change regarding game idea submissions

Hi Appswellers,

We’re writing to give everyone a heads up on a change coming later this week, and to get your feedback and input on how we might implement this change. We’re getting a lot of ideas coming in through Appswell lately, which we love. In particular, it seems as if we’re getting a very heavy volume of ideas for games ideas. We love games as much as the next app user, but games are a very specific niche of apps, and we never really intended Appswell to be a maker of games. We’re really looking for inventive, creative new ways people could use their iPhones, not so much the very creative stories and scenarios of types of videogames we see proposed. Typically, most app makers are either game shops that build game apps, or they are not. Very few companies successfully make both game and non-game apps. Appswell will make non-game apps.

We still encourage everybody to continue to submit game app ideas, though these game ideas will be given their own section. You can still view game ideas, and bring your friends in to vote, but game ideas will be viewable only through the games category of the app, and will not be eligible for any of the contest prizes (daily, weekly, or grand). We will award monthly a $100 prize to the top game idea, and we will consider these winning ideas for development, but we do not guarantee that we will develop the top game idea. We think defining our intentions will allow Appswell to provide a better experience, and build great apps we know we can do a great job on. That being said, we anticipate and understand that a certain portion of our audience that’s very keen on seeing their game apps built will be disappointed.

For fairness sake, for ideas that are currently in strong contention for the grand prize, we will grant an exception. Any idea currently in the top 5 of all vote-getters for the current contest period will be considered eligible for the grand prize. We will not be making a similar exception for any future contests.

So what’s a game app? We believe there are a lot of great non-game apps out there that incorporate a component of gaming or game theory, particular social or networked apps, through leaderboards, status, and a variety of other methods. There are also much more obvious game apps, such as action or arcade style games. 95% of the time, we think it’ll be pretty clear cut if an idea is a game idea or not, and the other 5% of the time, Appswell will use it’s judgment to review questionable apps. We’d very much like to hear your thoughts on how best to determine games verse non-games below.