Alphabet Inc. (Google) has announced that it is launching a small game festival for its app store Google Play, with hopes to shine a spotlight on a number of high-quality mobile games developed by independent studios.

The Indie Games Festival is set to take place on September 24 in San Francisco. Google says that it has invited around thirty studios to attend the event and showcase their best games. You can view the full list of games that will be showcased at Google’s Indie Game Festival here.

“We are committed to helping indie game developers thrive and highlighting the best available games for you to play,” Google says on the festival website.

This is not the first time Google has tried to spotlight certain indie games. Earlier this year, Google launched a curated indie games list on the Play Store, which highlights around 20 recent indie releases chosen by Google.

This kind of attention is much needed by indie developers, especially in the mobile space. In recent years, the number of indie games has skyrocketed due to a number of factors, including a lower barrier to entry thanks to free-to-use game engines like Unity 3D. There have also been a number of indie success stories to serve as inspiration, most notably Mojang’s incredibly popular Minecraft which has sold more than 106 million copies as of June 2016.

Perhaps the most important factor in the indie explosion, however, is the growth of digital distribution platforms like the App Store, Google Play, Steam and so on. According to analysts at TechNavio, improved infrastructure for gaming has enabled high quality graphics served up in the cloud, promoting growth. TechNavio projects an 11 percent CAGR between 2016-2020, growing market opportunities for these digital distribution platforms. Unfortunately, they are also becoming increasingly noisy, with plenty of low-quality games clogging the system, making it harder for developers to find an audience. This is an issue Google itself has addressed, launching developer tools such as a global content rating system that protects game makers and players alike.

Discoverability is a bigger challenge than ever, and curated lists and sponsored festivals can help many studios escape obscurity and actually earn some revenue.

Why it matters for Google

While Google’s festival and curated lists are certainly good news for independent Android developers, Google is likely not spending resources on these programs out of the kindness of its heart. After all, games account for a significant portion of Google Play’s revenue, so more games sold means more money for Google as well.

But there is another reason Google would want to highlight good indie games: to convince consumers (and developers) that its platform has more than low-quality knockoffs and shovelware.

Every digital distribution platform has issues with poor quality games and apps that are churned out by unscrupulous studios, but Google Play is notoriously bad at cleaning up its platform. Search for any popular game on Google Play, and you will likely find dozens of cheap clones trying to make a quick buck (Flappy Bird example above).

The company’s new indie festival is a chance for Google to say “not everything here is trash.”

Image courtesy of Google