If you’ve ever dreamed of making video games, then generally, Android has been your first step towards building that portfolio. And if you’ve got something to show for all that passion, Google’s Indie-game festival is the place for you to be.
Google announced the festival earlier this year with the intention to motivate and raise awareness for all independent game developers out there. Though this wouldn’t be the first time Google has attempted to provide such developers with a platform to promote their products: they recently introduced Indie Corner, to help developers reach out to far more gamers than they could with their works of art.
Google Play has always been the largest online digital store and the best platform for any enthusiastic developer. The company has now opened up registrations for the Google Play Indie Games Festival in San Francisco and announced the official exhibitor line-up.
The festival boasts several opportunities for independent developers such as(and not restricted to) allowing developers to show off their projects to the public, network with many others in the same industry, as well as compete for prizes which include things like Google ad campaign support or even tickets to its annual developer conference, Google I/O, Google Cloud credits, NVIDIA SHIELD Android TVs and K1 tablets, and Razer Forge TV bundles.
Admission into the event has been stated to be free. Any and all participants, including the public, will be allowed to vote for which game they thought was the best and try out any and all upcoming titles featured in the festival. But public votes won’t be all that decide the festival winners, there’ll also be an official Judges panel which’ll include industry personalities like:
- Ron Carmel, co-founder of Indie Fund and co-creator of World of Goo
- Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer at Google
- Hyunse Chang, Business Development Manager at Google Play
- Emily Greer, CEO of Kongregate
- David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox
- Lina Chen, Co-founder & CEO of Nix Hydra
- Alex Lee, Producer, Program Manager, Daydream & Project Tango at Google
- Jordan Maron, gamer and YouTuber “Captain Sparklez.”
Google’s event page states their ideology towards Indie developers:
To celebrate and showcase the passion and innovation of indie game developers, we are hosting an Indie Games Festival at the Terra Gallery in San Francisco on Saturday, September 24. About thirty top indie developers are selected to showcase their best game, giving you a unique opportunity to play new and unreleased games and vote for the best.
As for more details, the event will be emceed by veteran game designer Richard Lemarchand, who was the lead designer at Crystal Dynamics(Tomb Raider series 2016) and Naughty Dog(Uncharted series), now an Associate Chair and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media and Games Division.
