The future of gaming has arrived.

PowerInbox is a new frontier for games. It brings your games to players at a place they already spend lots of hours of their time--email! Games in Email is a PowerInbox sponsored indie game developer contest where the industry's most cutting edge indie game developers compete on the best games in email. Be a part of this email revolution and earn bragging rights, massive distribution for your games, and unbelievable exposure for your game and company.

Participants must be:

• at least 18 years old by March 19th, 2013
• entered as individuals or a company (exception: individuals working for a company that submits an Entry cannot participate as an individual)

Entries must be:

• submitted in English
• free of copyrighted materials owned by any third party or material that is deemed sexually explicit, excessively violent, or derogatory

For a complete set of rules, see the Official Rules.

This contest is completed in three steps:

1. Submit! Simply fill out the submission form. This notifies us of your interest to participate and win awesome prizes! We then follow up with you individually for step number 2...
2. Integrate! You integrate PowerInbox into your game, netting huge retention, re-engagement, and increased spending habits with your users.
3. Compete! The developer with the best results wins! There's also a runner-up winning category for the most innovative developer, that our veteran judges declare that despite not having the best data results, still showcase innovation in gaming!

Submitting your game is easy

• Click the Submit Your Game button
• Enter all the required information. Make it your best and tell us everything you want us to know as you cannot revise your entry later!

  A complete entry must include:

  • Your contact information
  • A Name/Title for your game (maximum of 100 characters)
  • A Game Description (maximum of 2,000 characters)

Integrate your game with Email

• Head over to the PowerInbox Developer Portal and get started with an easy tutorial for how to enabling your game to work in email.
• PowerInbox provides support to help integrate your game into email (via phone, email and Skype)
• At the end of this phase, we will reach out on April 19 - 21 to verify your DAU numbers

Compete!

• Once your game is integrated with email, you can begin promotion and encouraging your gamers to play your game right inside their mail!

Two winners will be selected with two different sets of criteria.

Grand Prize Winner

• Highest number of PowerInbox installs
• Most games played on email
• Highest engagement on games played in email (engagement is defined as how often the player is returning to play the game inside email)

Innovation Prize Winner

• Fun factor
• Innovation in use of email in the game
• Production Quality

Your game must satisfy the following requirements:

• The game must integrate PowerInbox to send interactive email
• The game must promote the PowerInbox install on the website, in game and in email

All qualified submissions that are received by April 19th will then proceed to the analytics collection period April 22nd - May 24th. During this time:

• Contestants will provide screenshots of DAU information
• Powerinbox will collect information on:
  • Number of Powerinbox installs by contestants' game player user base
  • Number of sessions of contestants' game played
  • Engagement of games played in email as measured by number of times each unique player returns to play the game on email

Additionally qualified submissions will be reviewed by the judges on May 28 to pick the winners for the runner up prize.

Of the finalists, 2 winners will be selected -- a grand prize winner and Innovation prize.

Special Considerations

Special Consideration for the grand prize winner for games that have at least 15,000 Daily Active Users (DAU)

What is PowerInbox?

PowerInbox is revolutionizing email by enabling live, interactive content inside of popular email services, such as Gmail, Outlook (Hotmail) and Yahoo Mail. PowerInbox is an application framework similar to Adobe Flash or Unity which enables your users to view interactive versions of your emails right inside their existing email clients. You can use PowerInbox right now to experience interactive emails from LinkedIn, Twitter and more.

What is interactive email?

Interactive email (or PowerEmails as we refer to them) are enhanced versions of the "static" emails that you currently send to your users. These PowerEmails let your users take advantage of the full power of the modern web right inside an email message.

With PowerEmails, your users can play your games right inside the emails they receive from you. But playing games inside email is just the beginning, your users can shop, watch, share, listen, rent, find, learn, survey, schedule and much more right inside your emails.

What are the benefits of PowerEmails?

The main benefit for you is increased engagement with your game. In the standard email funnel, there is a large drop-off when the email recipient is asked to click inside the email to leave their email client and go to your website. PowerInbox eliminates this step and lets your users play your game right inside their email client.

The main benefit for your game players is that they can stay in context of their email while still experiencing and using your game right inside their email client.

How do my users get PowerInbox inside their email client?

At present, PowerInbox is a browser extension and must be installed once by the end user. This is similar to how Adobe Flash and Unity must be installed in the browser to enable compatible content to run. So you must encourage your users to install PowerInbox on your website and from inside the emails you send them.

The PowerInbox team is working with all major email clients to integrate PowerInbox directly inside the clients so that there would be no download required.

Which email clients and browsers does PowerInbox support?

PowerInbox can be installed in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari to enable your games in email. PowerInbox works across virtually all major email clients.

How do I promote PowerInbox to my users?

We recommend several ways to ensure users can get your interactive content. You can place calls to action within all your existing email notifications and marketing messages. You can place a download button inside your game. It is recommended you add a step to your registration process so users can be enabled. Providing incentives in the form of additional game points or credits also increases the conversion rate. For more tips read here on "Promoting PowerInbox to your Players"

Core Philosophy

The YetiZen philosophy is built on the idea that networking and collaboration foster innovation. We are hosting Games in Email to bring the brightest minds in the industry together to compete as we search for the best developers.

You, as indie game developers, are the ones pushing the boundaries of gaming now lets take it to a new platform. We want to reward and foster the creativity of the winners of Games in Email by considering you for our Accelerator Program. Our program only accepts the top 1.5% of gaming startups out of over 700 companies that apply.

Accelerator Program

YetiZen Accelerator is the only games focused accelerator in existence. Using the experiences of 150 mentors, 9 VCs, hundred of investors and gaming and non-gaming strategic investors and acquirers, YetiZen helps startups understand and execute distribution, retention, monetization, funding and partnership plans that help them grow into successful scalable startups! Learn More

Coplay at the Innovation Lab

The Innovation Lab is a 20,000 square foot games innovation space in the heart of San Francisco, the only space of its kind. Here, YetiZen created Coplay, a workspace for anyone in the game industry to learn, connect, and work together. Helping a community grow is the basis for growing the industry, so YetiZen has dedicated the space to establishing these developer synergies at the heart of the community. Learn More

Need help integrating your game into email? We're here to help.