Google Play: First Indie Game Festival Announced

     As an Android user and fan, this is very heartening to see.  Google Play is having an Indie Game Festival this fall in San Francisco.  It's good to hear, because- honestly- Android is missing out on a lot of potentially amazing games because most stuff winds up over on iOS devices and don't make it to Android.  This festival will shine a light on Android and hopefully lure in a bunch of new and interesting indie developed games.

"Google Play is the largest store for digital content; 65 billion apps and games were downloaded over the past year. 

It's an immense platform that we have, and along with that is an opportunity to better support the indie games community." 

-Jamil Moledina (Strategic lead for Google Play Games) 

      The Google Play Indie Games Festival is looking to showcase roughly 30 games.  The festival is meant to support and help indie developers on Google Play.  There seems to be some serious issues of getting found on the Play store, and even finding specific items is a nightmare at times.  With that taken into consideration, stumbling upon great indies is nearly impossible right now- which will be hopefully remedied along with this festival.  The Play store needs a serious overhaul.

     Google is already taking submissions (and will accept them up until August 14th), but there are some requirements, such as the team must have less than 15 full-time employees and must be located in the US or Canada.
     In addition, they are hoping for some good Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality submissions as well.  Not that this is specifically what they are looking for- so submit anyways.  Festival attendees will get to vote on favorites- narrowing down their top 15, then developers narrow that to 7 (who receive prizes), and then of those 3 will win "top honors" and more prizes.  Some prizes include Tango devices, I/O 2017 tickets, and ad support through Google.

     As an indie game enthusiast I am very excited for this.  It's good to see that some unknown indies might get a huge opportunity to expand their player base.  More interesting games is always a good thing for gamers.

     The Google Play Indie Games Festival will be on Saturday September 24th

     Google Play Indie Game Festival [ Submission Form ]

     Source [ Engadget ] via [ DroidGamers ]