Greg Hartrell is Director of Product Management for Google Play and Android

The Google Game Developers Summit 2021 will continue to help your game development

In the last year, we’ve seen Android and Play reach new heights as more and more people can Play games without leaving their homes. We continue to make Google Play a more consumer-friendly platform, giving game developers more opportunities to connect with a diverse global audience through Google Play. In fact, Android has reached 3 billion monthly active devices, while Google Play has grown to 2.5 billion monthly active users and 140 billion installs worldwide.

At Google, we’re a service for everyone, and we’re committed to helping all developers reach people at the right time: from big game studios to indie teams, they can create fun and innovative games anywhere in the world.

At this game Developers Summit, we shared a series of tools and solutions updates to help you throughout the game business lifecycle. We’ve also announced new tools to make game development easier, an evolving ecosystem that allows your games to reach more devices, and new opportunities to drive your market success on Google Play.

We’ve rounded up the highlights of the event and a quick guide to getting started

Simplify the development process

  • We’ve launched the Android Game Development Kit (AGDK), a collection of tools and development libraries that can help you develop, optimize, and deliver high-quality Android games. In its initial release, AGDK covered three main areas:
  1. Integrate workflow tools (such as a new Visual Studio extension)
  2. Basic C/C++ game library (e.g. new game text input library)
  3. Performance optimizations (such as our GPU profiler framework Performance profiler support and new load time support for Android Performance Tuner)

  • We’re working on two new areas in Android 12. The Game Information Center will provide a layered experience that allows users to quickly access key tools, such as screenshots and notes, during play, and we’ll be rolling out that experience on selected devices later this year. With the Game Mode API, you can react when players choose different performance configurations for your Game: saving battery consumption during a long commute, for example, or getting the highest frame rate through performance Mode. You can integrate the game mode API through Beta prior to Android 12’s release.

  • Reach and Devices is a new data and insight tool to help you achieve more success on Google Play. This tool helps you understand and predict the distribution of user and technical problems across geographies and critical device attributes such as Android versions, memory, graphics stacks, and chipsets. You can use it to provide a business case for different geographies and equipment targeting decisions, to explore optimization opportunities, and to set test priorities for your next release.

  • Firebase Remote Config allows you to update the gameplay and look and feel of your game for different target devices without having to release a new version. The new personalization features are now available for early access through the Firebase Alpha program. This tool leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to automatically provide the best experience for each of your users.

More equipment

  • On Chrome OS, Google Play usage grew 300% last year, making it the highest use of Google Play apps and games since we launched Google Play on Chromebooks in 2016. Unity recently introduced support for Chrome OS on Unity 2021.2 and will support Unity 2020 LTS later this year. To better reach this rapidly growing audience, optimize your game and join the growing ranks of Chrome OS developers.

Harvest success

  • Play As You Download, which is built into the Android 12 kernel, allows users to enter the game in seconds while downloading game material in the background. We were happy to see the game load and open at least twice as fast as before, improving the user experience.
  • We will continue to innovate on Play Asset Delivery to ensure that players can reduce wait times without sacrificing quality. Texture compression format localization will now automatically find suitable modern compression formats to further reduce the size of your game.
  • You can use the Play Manager’s ratings and reviews to help you see how your game is rated on different devices and configurations in new ways, as well as access and query your rating history and new historical rating metrics.
  • We’ve updated the pre-registration feature in the Play Store to make it more useful. Now you can use the pre-registered app ads series to increase your game’s appeal in open beta, or to pre-register your game in the Play Store.
  • The new Play Integrity API helps combat abuse, such as cheating and unauthorized early access, by helping you verify whether you’re using the Google Play installed legitimate game binaries on a real Android device. If you’re interested in getting a first look at the Play Integrity API, you can test it here.

You can read more about Google Game Developer Summit 2021, or visit the official guide for more updates. Also, please continue to follow the official wechat accounts of “Google Developers” and “Android Developers “to get the latest resources on Android game development.