Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing
As part of our commitment to helping all developers grow on our platform, at Google Play we have various programs focused on supporting small games studios. A few weeks ago we announced the winners of the Indie Games Festival in Europe, Korea and Japan, and the 2022 class of the Indie Games Accelerator.
Today, we are launching the Indie Games Fund in Latin America. We will be awarding $2 million dollars in non-dilutive cash awards, in addition to hands-on support, to selected small games studios based in LATAM, to help them build and grow their businesses on Google Play.
The program is open to indie game developers who have already launched a game - whether it’s on Google Play or another mobile platform, PC or console. Each selected recipient will get between $150,000 and $200,000 dollars to help them take their game to the next level, and build successful businesses.
Check out all eligibility criteria and apply now. Priority will be given to applications received by 12:00 p.m. BRT, 31 October, 2022.
Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing
As part of our commitment to helping all developers grow on our platform, at Google Play we have various programs focused on supporting small games studios. A few weeks ago we announced the winners of the Indie Games Festival in Europe, Korea and Japan, and the 2022 class of the Indie Games Accelerator.
Today, we are launching the Indie Games Fund in Latin America. We will be awarding $2 million dollars in non-dilutive cash awards, in addition to hands-on support, to selected small games studios based in LATAM, to help them build and grow their businesses on Google Play.
The program is open to indie game developers who have already launched a game - whether it’s on Google Play or another mobile platform, PC or console. Each selected recipient will get between $150,000 and $200,000 dollars to help them take their game to the next level, and build successful businesses.
Check out all eligibility criteria and apply now. Priority will be given to applications received by 12:00 p.m. BRT, 31 October, 2022.
A medical game for doctors, a language game for kids, a scary game for horror lovers and an escape room game for thrill seekers! In this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we’re celebrating the founders behind a wonderful variety of games from all over the world. Have a read and get gaming!
To start, let’s meet Sam from Chicago. Coming from a family of doctors, his Dad challenged him to make a game to help those in the medical field. Sam agreed, made a game and months later discovered over 100,000 doctors were able to practice medical procedures. This early success inspired him to found Level Ex - a company of 135, making world-class medical games for doctors across the globe. Despite his achievements, his Dad still hopes Sam may one day get into medicine himself and clinch a Nobel prize.
Next, a few more stories from around the world:
Aldo and Sandro from Peru - founders of Dark Dome. They combine storytelling and art to make thrilling and chilling games, filled with plot twists and jump scares.
Vladimir, Tomislav and Boris from Croatia - founders of Pine Studio. They won the Indie Games Festival 2021 with their game Cats In Time.
Kelly, Mikk, Reimo and Madde from Estonia - founders of ALPA kids. Their language games for children have a huge impact on early education and language preservation.
Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.
A medical game for doctors, a language game for kids, a scary game for horror lovers and an escape room game for thrill seekers! In this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we’re celebrating the founders behind a wonderful variety of games from all over the world. Have a read and get gaming!
To start, let’s meet Sam from Chicago. Coming from a family of doctors, his Dad challenged him to make a game to help those in the medical field. Sam agreed, made a game and months later discovered over 100,000 doctors were able to practice medical procedures. This early success inspired him to found Level Ex - a company of 135, making world-class medical games for doctors across the globe. Despite his achievements, his Dad still hopes Sam may one day get into medicine himself and clinch a Nobel prize.
Next, a few more stories from around the world:
Aldo and Sandro from Peru - founders of Dark Dome. They combine storytelling and art to make thrilling and chilling games, filled with plot twists and jump scares.
Vladimir, Tomislav and Boris from Croatia - founders of Pine Studio. They won the Indie Games Festival 2021 with their game Cats In Time.
Kelly, Mikk, Reimo and Madde from Estonia - founders of ALPA kids. Their language games for children have a huge impact on early education and language preservation.
Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.
Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing
Today, at the finals of our Indie Games Festival, thousands of people came together to celebrate the passion, creativity and innovation of small games studios.
Players, jury members, and industry experts attended the event - hosted in a custom virtual world - where they discovered the finalist games and met the people who made them. They were also the first to find out who the winners are, who will receive prizes and promotions that will help them boost their visibility.
At the event we also announced the studios selected to join our Indie Games Accelerator. These companies will receive exclusive education and mentorship over a 10-week virtual program, to help them build and grow successful businesses.
Please join us in congratulating each of the winning games and studios.
Asantee Games - Brazil Fiveamp Hawaii - US MegaJogos - Brazil Niebla Games - Chile Northern Forge Studios - Canada SHD Games Inc. - Canada Skyborne Games Inc. - US Solaris Mobile - Brazil Starling Team - Brazil Temple Gates Games - US
Asia Pacific
Drakemount - South Korea Eternal Dream Studio - Indonesia Gambir Studio - Indonesia Hoit Studio - South Korea Ranida Games - Philippines Rigged Box Softworks - Indonesia SweatyChair - Australia The Sane Studio - South Korea THEAND COMPANY - South Korea Vnstart LLC - Vietnam
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Alcore Games - Ukraine Appox AB - Sweden Hammurabi Games - Turkiye JE Software AB - Sweden LoopyMood - Ukraine PocApp Studios AB - Sweden Rarepixels Indie Games - Spain Rikzu Games - Portugal Rojeh Maher - Egypt Štěpán Fiala - Prague
Didn’t make it?
If you missed the event or would like to explore further, you can still log in to the virtual world and discover more about the finalists. Available for a limited time only. Explore now.
Stay tuned for more programs helping small games companies grow on Google Play.
One day, Annabel Angwenyi was running errands in Nairobi, Kenya when her car refused to start. She called her usual mechanic, but he was busy helping another customer on the opposite side of town. She knew there must be another mechanic close by, but because many local businesses don’t have an online presence, she had trouble finding and contacting someone else. Annabel was frustrated — but she also saw an opportunity to solve a problem.
After a lot of research, hard work and perseverance, she and her co-founder Patrick launched Ziada, an app that connects people across Kenya to local service providers. Today, Ziada has a team of seven people and over 60,000 downloads on Google Play.
Annabel is one of the founders featured in #WeArePlay, which spotlights the people behind Google Play’s apps and games. We chatted with Annabel to learn more about how she got Ziada up and running with no tech experience, and the impact it’s had on the local community.
How did you turn your idea into an app?
Patrick and I didn’t have any tech experience — we’re both business people. So in 2017, we partnered with a software developer who believed in our dream and helped us create the app. After a lot of hard work, we published the first version of Ziada on Google Play that same year. But it didn’t really take off. We weren’t sure if the Kenyan market was ready for something like this, so we took a break.
Then when the pandemic started in 2020, we noticed people wanted to access more things on demand and online, like food delivery and taxi services. So we rebranded the app, including improving the user interface to better reflect how we could help, and launched again. Now, our app has over 60,000 downloads on Google Play and is helping service providers across Kenya find new customers.
What impact has your app had on the community?
Kenya is an entrepreneurial nation, with people just like us wanting to build something for themselves. Having owned small businesses in the past, we knew the app had potential to help others grow their businesses. And it makes us so happy to see this actually happening. I’m also really proud of how we’re helping women — who make up 38% of service providers on Ziada — create their own income. I believe when you empower women, you empower the whole community. It’s something that’s really close to our hearts at Ziada. Most of our team are women, and many of us mentor young girls in the community. In fact, two of our mentees are joining Ziada as software developers.
Any advice for someone starting their own app or game business?
Just jump in. I think that initial leap of faith is the hardest one to make — it definitely was for me. The app or game will never be 100% perfect, and if you wait for that moment, the train may have already left (both in terms of user needs and market share).
If you have a working prototype or early version of your app, get it on Google Play and build hype around it. I was surprised at how patient our users were with Ziada in its early days, even with all its shortcomings. But that’s because they wanted it to work. If you’re providing a good solution to a problem, the adopters will come.
What’s next for Ziada?
We’re always working on new services, like helping contractors rent equipment and tools to complete jobs or providing coaching through our upcoming business advisory service. We also want to keep partnering with growing, local businesses and expand our user base — not just in Kenya, but across the African continent. There’s so much potential here, and we’re only just getting started.
Read more about Annabel and other app and game founders featured in#WeArePlay.
Indie game developers make fun and creative games on Google Play that millions of people enjoy.
On September 3rd 2022, we’ll be hosting the annual Indie Games Festival from Google Play to celebrate unique games launched this year and showcase the inspiring emerging talent behind these titles. The event will take place online as a virtual event to bring gamers, developers and industry experts together.
The annual Indie Games Festival gives small game developers from South Korea, Japan and select countries in Europe, a platform to connect with indie fans and share their new releases.
Here are three things to look forward to at this year’s event.
Celebrate indie games wherever you are on September 3
No matter where you are in the world, you can attend the Indie Games Festival finals in South Korea, Japan or Europe. All you need to do is sign up for one of the events, and you will be set to explore and meet people from all over the world who also enjoy playing indie games.
Discover top-tier indie games from around the world
Earlier this year, small indie teams and solo-devs submitted their games for a chance to be showcased at the Festival. Dive into our tropical-themed Festival and start exploring the games showcase, a dedicated zone where you can discover the best new games at each booth.
This is your chance to check out the 20 finalist games from each of the three regions and meet the people who made them. You’ll also be the first to hear who the winners are and other big announcements on the main stage.
Be on the lookout for special quests, minigames and fun challenges that you can play solo or with friends.
Help our hosts cheer on the winners
At each event, hosts will guide you through the awards ceremony and keep you entertained. Cheer on the finalists at the main stage with games commentator Inho Jung, who will be the host in South Korea; comedian and Youtuber Kajisak-san, who will present the finals in Japan for the second year running; and games presenter Julia Hardy, who will host the European event and give a few special announcements.
At the European Festival, you’ll also discover which indies will join the 2022 class of the Indie Games Accelerator — a program that helps small game studios take their game to the next level through training and mentorship.
Posted by Tamzin Taylor, Head of Google Play Partnerships, Western Europe
Today I’m excited to announce that we are launching the second episode of Google Play Coffee breaks. In this episode I enjoyed a virtual coffee with Ravi Teja Akondi, co-founder and CEO of iMumz. iMumz caters to expecting and new parents to help them practice wellbeing and mindfulness during the early stages of parenthood. Ravi and his team recently graduated from Appscale Academy, an initiative aimed at supporting promising Indian app start-ups and helping them grow into global businesses. It’s great to see their continued growth and to hear them share tips and learnings they picked up along the way.
Watch the full Coffee breaks episode and get my take on it below:
The team at iMumz created their app with the mission to help expecting and new parents easily follow a healthy lifestyle every day, encouraging them to practice mindfulness daily. The app provides support to parents focusing on well-being during the first 1,000 days of pregnancy; that is 270 days of pregnancy and the first two years of parenthood. Today, the app helps over 600,000 people achieve these goals.
Ravi recalled how in the early days the iMumz team sent out actionable insights to their audience via a messenger app. They started by customizing small daily routines for those seeking to learn more about wellness during pregnancy and parenthood. By tracking the completion rates and retention rates, the team were able to see that they were really creating something valuable and gained the confidence to take the business from a messaging service to a full mobile application.
Growing a sustainable business
The first step for the iMumz team was to work on building out a community of early adopters. After conducting initial market research the team realized those in tier one cities - the metro cities in India - were the most likely to become early adopters. As they expanded to more and more parents, they learnt how important it was to tailor their pricing to different types of audiences. Experimentation was key to understanding what their different audiences were willing to pay. Remember that beyond the really useful data you can gather from running experiments, you can also get incredibly valuable direct and written feedback from users by inviting them into closed testing groups you can easily set up in the Play Console, without this feedback impacting your star rating.
Nurturing your app community
Through experimenting and listening to users, iMumz learnt that parents-to-be wanted to connect with others like them, and the team quickly realized that the people using their app needed a community. People wanted to connect with others going through similar life events. By building out community spaces the team was able to help initiate discussions on specific topics; such as breastfeeding, baby-led weaning, and self care postpartum. The community has since helped important conversations develop naturally, and provides iMumz users with another level of peer support. Today, their community is vibrant, with more than 5,000 conversations taking place every day!
When it comes to building out a community it’s important that your messaging to users feels genuine and authentic. This was especially important for iMumz, given the app caters to a sensitive and important set of life moments for parents. To start, as with any message, making message content relevant and timely is critical. For example, consider the time of day when determining the best time to post new content, updates, or sending push notifications, and remember different time zones when you’re dealing with a global audience. Additionally, it can help to put a relatable person or character behind the message (remember to localize this to your audience though).
Ravi also shared two key learnings he felt made the biggest difference to the growth of his app:
1) Experiment. There are so many ideas you might find counterintuitive - don’t automatically discount any or jump to conclusions until you test them. Be data driven. That's going to help you provide more value, faster.
2) Narrow down what you’re working on, so you focus on one task or challenge at a time. You might be tempted to do many things at once, but narrowing down will help give you amplified results.
To where does the future lead?
Moving forward, the team at iMumz plan to stay focused on their mission; making the future generation healthier, happier, and more intelligent. They also have global aspirations and they plan to launch across a few selected geographies soon, launching localized versions of the app.
It was such a pleasure to speak to Ravi about his experiences and I can’t wait to see iMumz’s continued growth and next steps. I get so much inspiration from speaking with the people behind apps like iMumz, and I know that inspires my team to continue investing in and developing initiatives such as Appscale Academy.
We are looking forward to continuing to learn from more businesses, and see what you all do next. Stay tuned for the next episode of Coffee Breaks.
Tamzin Taylor, Head of Play Partnerships, Western Europe
Do you have any questions for iMumz? What are your own tips for other app or game businesses? Let us know on Twitter.
Posted by Yaift Becher, Product Manager, Google Play and Luís Dorelli, Engineer, Google Play
Deep links are a great way to improve engagement with your in-app content and the overall user experience by accepting traffic from external sources, including the web. Keeping your deep links in good shape, however, can be a challenge, so many apps have partial, broken, or no deep links configured. For some developers, even answering basic questions like “is this URL deep-linked?” or “why is this deep link not working?” can be difficult to answer.
That’s why we’re making it easier for you to keep your deep links in good shape with a new, dedicated Play Console page. This page collects all the information and tools related to your app’s deep links in one convenient place, giving you a quick but comprehensive snapshot of your current setup to help you identify and troubleshoot issues at a glance.
See a comprehensive snapshot of your deep links so you can easily identify and troubleshoot issues.
On the new deep links page, you’ll find a quick summary of possible issues with your app’s deep links and the steps to take to fix them. The page also lists all web domains your app is configured to accept traffic from, as well as information about the user experience from those domains. In cases where the user experience could be improved, you’ll see step-by-step guidance on how to fix the issue, showing you exactly what’s missing from your app or website association with code snippets to make sure you get it right.
Get step-by-step guidance on how to fix issues with your deep links.
Lastly, the new deep links page offers a full drill-down of your deep links app configuration, listing details of all intent filters and the sources they are configured to receive traffic from. Again, you can see if each line item is properly configured, and if not, get specific instructions about how to fix it.
We’re very excited to share this first release of the deep links page with you, making it much easier to make sense of your setup and fix broken deep links. The next release, coming later this year, will also highlight important website URLs that aren’t yet configured as deep links, so that you don’t miss an opportunity to drive more quality traffic to your app.
Check out the new deep links page today to see the status of your deep links and fix any setup issues.
Google Play turned 10 this year, and we’ve been keeping the celebrations going with local developer communities around the world. It’s an extra special occasion in Asia Pacific, which is home to one of the largest app developer populations (nearly a third of the 26.9 million app developers worldwide) and one of the most engaged audiences. In fact, people in Asia Pacific download and use mobile apps more than any other region.
Developers in Asia Pacific are reaching global audiences, with hundreds of millions of downloads outside the region. Some of these apps have become global names and inspired new trends on Play, like multiplayer gaming (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang), super apps (Grab), rapid delivery e-commerce (Coupang) and fintech solutions for the unbanked (Paytm).
Let’s take a closer look at some other emerging themes on Play — like mental health, news and music — where developers in Asia Pacific are making their mark globally.
“The main goal of Forest is to encourage users to put down their phones and focus on the more important things around them,” says Shaokan Pi, CEO of Forest. Here’s how it works — you set a focus time period, whether you’re working at the office or at dinner with friends. Once you put down your phone, a virtual tree starts growing. If you stay focused (and don’t look at your phone), the sapling grows into a big tree. And you can earn virtual coins to grow more trees, and eventually a whole forest. There’s a real-world benefit, too — thanks to a partnership between Forest and Trees for the Future, you can spend your coins to plant real trees on Earth.
SmartNews, which is also celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, uses artificial intelligence to collect and deliver a curated view of news from all over the world. But it’s not just an echo chamber — its News From All Sides feature shows people articles across a wide spectrum of political perspectives. SmartNews has also developed timely products like a COVID-19 dashboard and trackers for wildfires and hurricanes.
Evolve, a health-tech startup supporting the wellbeing of the LGBTQ+ community, landed on Google Play’s Best of 2021 list in India. The app offers educational content for members of the LGBTQ+ community, covering topics like embracing your sexuality and coming out to loved ones. “There is a need for more customized solutions for this community,” says Anshul Kamath, co-founder of Evolve. “We hope to provide a virtual safe space where members can work on themselves and specific challenges that impact their daily mental health.”
The Evolve team with their “Best of Play” trophy in 2021
This musical game app quickly found fans in the U.S., Japan, Brazil and Russia. Magic Tiles 3 is designed to let anyone — even those without a musical background — play instruments like the piano, guitar and drums on their smartphone. You can choose from over 1,000 songs across genres like pop, rap, jazz and electronic dance music, and compete in an interactive game with others around the world.
Mom Sitter, a platform connecting parents with babysitters, topped the Play Store’s childcare category in Korea last year. But it didn’t actually start as a mobile app. It was founded as a website to help parents find babysitters while they were at work or when daycare centers were too full. After attending the ChangGoo program, Google’s training program for developers and startups in Korea, the Mom Sitter team learned they could reach more people if they went mobile. Today, caretakers all over the world use their services. “Childcare issues concern not only working women but everyone who raises children, and it’s important that they can find support,” says Jeeyea Chung, founder of Mom Sitter.
