GWB’s role is to find innovation in the indie game industry, both domestically in China and interna-tionally. We have Support Plan and Awards activities designed to help small and medium-sized teams from around the globe get the help they need.

We don’t directly invest in or publish games ourselves, instead we promote games, support games and connect them to the right group. Our job is to find the right way help your game be a success, whether that is through promotion, consultation, incubation or referral.

The support plan focuses on connecting devs with our in-house support services, such as our ex-perts group and the Tencent Gameplay Innovation Fund (TGIF). The Award competition is our pri-mary promotional activity, run in collaboration with some of our partners, designed to spotlight games and give them more exposure, as well as get them access to extra support that those part-ners can offer.

For the Support Plan, you are free to show us your game at any time of the year. It’s a 12-month on-going activity. However, the awards competition generally runs between February / March until August or September, and the submission period will be at the beginning of that. Pay attention to our Awards page and social media feed for exact dates. Support Plan games are still eligible for participation in the awards, so if registration for the awards hasn’t started yet, feel free to apply for the support plan and opt-in to awards participation.

We are primarily looking at PC, mobile and browser-based games.

Yes. We want to be clear here. If a game wins an award, it doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to partici-pate in the support plan. And, if a game doesn’t win an award, that doesn’t mean it is excluded. The 2 activities are run separately and have different evaluation criteria and different evaluation committees.

Generally speaking, yes, we like to focus on supporting upcoming games.

There may be exceptions to this, so please feel free to ask about this, but please don’t place your hopes on games that have already been released.

As noted above, there may be exceptions. So, please let us know if you would like us to look at your back catalogue. However, please keep expectations in check.

Yes.

No. Developers retain 100% complete creativecontrol over their games. Over time, as we receive new game builds we willcontinue give feedback and it is up to the developers about how or if they wantto implement that.

Yes.

For the awards platforms, check the main awards page. We primarily look at PC, mobile and browser games. Check the awards page once that competition for that year has been announced for up-to-date and accurate information.

The general rule for awards participation is that a game is unreleased. However, if it was only re-cently just prior to the awards, it may be considered - contact us to discuss this. We’re not too strict about this, and nowadays things such as Early Access can complicate what a “released” game is, so we understand this is not a black-and-white situation.

If the game will be released during the awards period…that’s absolutely no problem. In fact, we en-courage you to work with us on this as we may be able to share social media posts and promo-tional materials to try and help you reach a wider audience.

When it comes to the awards, no - we want games that are creative, innovative, inspiring and fun.

We will work with regional and media partners to promote any awards news, including which games win awards. By working with regional groups and associations we can ensure news spreads more widely and guarantees maximum exposure for these games.

There is also the possibility of paid ads / sponsored posts. We can also offer promotional content through industry partners, via their social channels, websites, newsletters etc.

And, of course, there may also be content produced in Chinese, not just on English-language channels. This is a type of promotion that incredibly hard for most studios to get.

No. The only people who will receive your game in any form are the judging panel, including guest judges, or partners (for consideration in sponsored categories). No other distribution of the game will take place in any form without developer consent.

In order to help with spreading news about your game, it’s useful for us to know which channels you use on social media. This helps us co-ordinate with you for when we release content related to your game. It also makes the job of social media management much, much easier on our side when we have all this information together.

Email us. It’s gwbcontact@tencent.com.

For business, partnership and marketing inquires email michael_britten@tencent.com.

Maybe. You can email us to check conference attendance and can also follow us on social media. Generally speaking, we tend to not to attend every conference ever - while our experts group is substantial, the day-to-day running is overseen by a small group and we need to pick-and-choose carefully. However, other Tencent teams may well be in attendance, and we encourage you to try to meet with them, especially the group responsible for your region.