Google recently announced that it will be holding a new event showcasing the latest developments in independent Android games, the Google Indie Games Festival.
Thirty private indie game-developing teams from all over the U.S. and Canada will be joining the event to feature their up and coming games for visitors to try out firsthand. In addition, awesome prizes await those who attend the event, be it the developers or public themselves, including Google ad campaign support, free tickets to Google I/O 2017, Tango devices and much more.
Indie Games Festival follows the success of the recently added Indie Corner on the Google Play Store, highlighting the latest available and staff-picked independent games to better reach its intended audience. The upcoming event celebrates the dedication and passion of the independent community and shall provide an additional avenue for developers to further increase their fan base and build a network for their games.
Developers
Developers who wish to become a part of the event may simply access the official submission form and fill up the necessary details. As mentioned, only 30 slots will be available for interested teams based in Canada and the U.S.
A couple of prior requirements have to be met to qualify for the event:
• Games should either have been published on or after Jan. 1 or are soon to be published games before December 31 this year.
• Unpublished games should have a playable demo available for the event.
• The development team should be a private entity.
• The development team does not have a separate account to publish the game on Google Play Store and instead self-publishes it under their brand unless the publisher is another indie game entity.
• Owners of the game should only have a team of 15 members or less. This applies to separate management teams as well in that both developers and publishers should have a total member count of no more than 15 full-time employees.
• Google urges developers to apply for their virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) games if possible and should use the available tech by the company, Google VR SDK or Tango SDK for AR.
Qualifying teams will be announced by the end of August.
Visitors
On the other hand, those who wish to simply attend the event will be glad to know that admission is free, though prior registration is needed to gain access. Attendees will have the "unique opportunity to play new and unreleased games" and can even vote for their top picks.
Google Indie Games Festival will commence on Sept. 24 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Terra Gallery, 511 Harrison Street, San Francisco, California.
The registration form for visitors is currently closed to the public.
