Google and international gaming brand MY.GAMES (part of Mail.ru Group) today announced a joint accelerator program, titled Game Drive, for promising mobile game studios and projects.
Developers have until Friday 8 January 2021 to submit proposals for consideration. From those submissions, the most promising projects will be selected by a panel of Google and MY.GAMES experts, who will provide consultation on developing the projects further and scaling them globally. Successful applicants will be invited to an online Demo Day with key stakeholders from MY.GAMES and Google on 28 January 2021, where developers will receive detailed feedback on their projects in English.
Support will include but not be limited to:
Expert assessment of a project and analysis of its business potential
Consulting and recommendations for product improvement
Networking and access to the MY.GAMES ecosystem and the company’s internal training projects
Google experts’ evaluation of the project, focused on launching in international markets
Opportunity to be considered for investments by MY.GAMES
Initially, the accelerator program is open to studios across Western Europe, the CIS region, Turkey, Israel, the Middle East, and Africa. To submit a project and to read the terms and conditions, developers should head to http://mgvc.com/gamedrive.
Game Drive marks the first collaboration project between Google and MY.GAMES. Throughout 2021, both parties will work towards expanding the scope of Game Drive to more territories and developing further initiatives aimed at different types of game developers.
“Mobile game development is an extremely competitive market and an idea alone is often not enough to acquire users,” commented Ilya Karpinsky, MGVC Managing Director, MY.GAMES CSO. “By launching this accelerator and building a partnership with Google, we hope to provide an unprecedented program for mobile game developers across Europe by providing support and expertise from two of the largest players in the market. This is the first stage of our partnership and we hope to announce more initiatives in the future.”
Meir Brand, VP EMEA Emerging Markets, Google: “There's huge creativity in the fast-growing gaming industry. We hope that this accelerator program with MY.GAMES Venture Capital will support talented and promising app developers in Western Europe and other countries, helping them to grow and go global, while continuing working from their home countries."
The expert evaluation of the MGVC project and Google includes:
MGVC:
Comprehensive project evaluation covers all aspects of game development, including product analysis (audience and business metrics), game design, monetization, interface design, launch, and promotion strategy. Experts will tell you what elements developers should pay attention to. Also, during the evaluation process, the MGVC team will analyze the most important product and marketing indicators of products (Retention Rate, % PU, ARPPU, LTV, CPI) and share market benchmarks that will allow you to objectively assess the current state of the project.
Google:
Top selected gaming titles (“soft launch” stage passed), and their studios will be eligible to receive one of a kind, tailored 360-degree title review conducted by Google experts. This includes evaluation of game content and mechanics, business metrics, as well as users' audience and developer team capabilities in order to enable global launch success. The program does not cover any type of commercial promotion or preferential ranking on Google platforms.
