The 2024 Indie Games Accelerator (IGA) has chosen 25 indie game developers from the Asia-Pacific region, making it the biggest group from this region since the launch of the Google Play training program in 2018. This represents the largest number of participants by region for this year. The group comprises developers from eight countries across Asia-Pacific, such as Korea, Indonesia, and India, and covers various mobile game genres including puzzles, role-playing, and educational games.
Mobile gaming is expected to see a global resurgence in 2024, driven by the growing interest in gaming in Asia-Pacific and the increasing use of AI tools by game studios. In Asia-Pacific, mobile gaming has gained popularity due to affordable smartphones, fast internet connectivity, and a wide variety of games from gaming companies headquartered in Asia. With the help of AI, developers can create adaptive gameplay, realistic characters, and dialogues to speed up game development, enabling smaller teams to bring innovative gaming concepts to life more quickly than ever before.
Over a period of 10 weeks, the IGA will connect 60 small and indie game studios (including 35 studios from outside Asia-Pacific) with Google products, including AI and Cloud tools, and a global network of mentors who have succeeded in the gaming industry.
Historically, the IGA has been successful in nurturing talent from the Asia-Pacific region. For example, Bombay Play, an India-based developer of multiplayer card games like Card Game 29 – Multiplayer Pro, raised $2.5 million in seed funding after participating in the program. In the first year following the IGA, they used their learnings to increase their revenue tenfold from $10,000 to $100,000, and expanded from a team of three developers to a company employing over 40 people today.
