The ballots have been cast and the votes are in. And now we get to see the apps and games that are nearest and dearest to Android users’ hearts in the first annual Players’ Choice Awards organized by Google.
December is usually that time of year when we get flooded by retrospective listicles and it seems that Google wants to make it a tradition for Google Play Store as well. For 2013, Android users have voted for their favorite games and apps under six funny sounding categories. The awards are in name only but should boost the apps’ popularity at least for a while and make them more visible to those who might have just glossed over their names.
Winner of the “I Can’t Quit You” award for being the most addictive game is Knights & Dragons, an online RPG that throws in a few elements of kingdom building. The “Old School, Still Cool” winner probably needs no introduction, with Bejeweled Blitz named as the best franchise game of the year. For the best movie tie-in game, The Hobbit: Kingdoms bags the “Lights, Camera, Games” category. Moving away from the games, we have Duolingo, the free language learning app, with the “Quietly Brilliant” award for enhancing even everyday activities. And “At Your Service” is Movies by Flixster for being the best app to fill your booking and buying needs. Of course, the awards is also a chance for Google to strut its own stuff and users have voted for YouTube as the best Google app, winning the “I <3 Google" award.
There were other games and apps that didn't make it to the cut but still deserved special mention due to users having written in just to tell Google how much they loved them. Augmented reality game Ingress and multiplayer strategy Samurai Siege are two favorite games while the Google News and Weather app NewsHog and the versatile SwiftKey Keyboard were names as favorite non-game apps.
SOURCE: Google
VIA: Android Central
Next year we should get a big group together to vote for Google Reader.