International Mobile Gaming Awards continues to celebrate indies in its 15th year

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
April 14, 2019
Updated June 18, 2025
9 min

It took a lot of vision in 2004 to appreciate mobile games as works of art that were worthy of an awards show. But in its 15th year, the International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) has become a celebration of what has become the best games in the largest segment of the game business.

The IMGA continues to celebrate indie games and lone artists who show great creativity in what was a $61.3 billion mobile game business in 2018, according to Nielsen’s SuperData market research division. Maarten Noyons, founder of the IMGA, looks back on the start of the IMGA as a time when mobile games had to earn a lot of respect.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.