The list of the top 70 developers participating in the excellent exhibition of ‘2024 Indie Craft’, a global indie game festival hosted by Seongnam City (Mayor Shin Sang-jin) and co-hosted by Seongnam Industry Promotion Agency (President Lee Eui-jun) and Korea Mobile Game Association (Chairman Hwang Seong-ik), has been confirmed.
326 trim, medium-sized, and indie game developers applied for’ 2024 Indie Craft’ this year, and 70 companies with excellent works were selected through a fair and strict review by mid-May. The management office said that screening was arduous due to the large number of good game contents submitted by a record number of developers this year and asked people to look forward to the offline exhibition of the selected developers.
In particular, expanded selection in the challenger category is said to have identified Korea’s future excellent game developers. Detailed information on about 80 excellent game developers, including 50 companies in the domestic sector, 20 companies in the challenger sector, and overseas developers, which will be revealed later, will be released on the IndieCraft official website in June.
The best-selected works will participate in the ‘GXG with INDIECRAFT’ offline exhibition in September, and the first-place winner in the domestic category will receive a prize worth 20 million won. In addition to commercialization support worth about 100 million won, you can participate in various events such as diagnostic mentoring, IR pitching day, and networking parties with industry officials.
The first event among the ‘2024 Indiecraft’ events is the ‘2024 International Game Industry Conference’, held at the International Conference Hall of the Gyeonggi Creative Economy Innovation Center for two days from May 30th to 31st. Unlike last year, it attracted attention as the first event because it is a dual exhibition and conference.
The opening lecture on the 30th begins with a keynote speech by Jeon Dong-jin, CEO of One Store. CEO Jeon Dong-jin, who completed an MBA at Columbia Business School and served as CEO of NCSoft’s Taiwan and Thailand branches, Smilegate, and former CEO of Blazed Korea, is leading the turbulent global market through ‘an app store that turned the game upside down, an indie game success scenario with One Store.’ We will introduce the scenario of the success of indie games presented by One Store in the mobile app market. In addition, many gamers are applying to observe as it is scheduled to cover industry trends in various fields such as game development, marketing, AI, and investment.
Hwang Seong-ik, co-chairman of the Indiecraft organizing committee, said, “This year, Indiecraft received the largest number of applications ever, so it took longer to select an excellent developer. I think the future of the Korean game industry is bright, as this is proof that the level and skills of indie game developers are improving. In addition, we will prepare well to provide various industry insights through this conference, which is the first start of the 2024 IndieCraft, to help with game development and operation.”
The IndieCraft official website will be updated with information on the ‘2024 IndieCraft‘ selected works and detailed information about the conference. The Korea Mobile Game Association can be contacted for inquiries regarding other events.