Over the recent years, we have witnessed substantial growth in the games industry during the Covid period in Pakistan and worldwide. It’s interesting to assimilate the different perspectives and insights of thought leaders in MENA, China, and Pakistan on the games industry and how it tends to shape up in 2021. The panel discussion held at Game X Conference, organized by Epiphany included Luke Stapley, Managing Director – Overseas at Cocos. Batuhan Avucan, Founder at Mobidictum, Fahad Bubshait, Founder at Nuat, Reine Abbas, CEO – Wixel Studios, and Muhammad Hilal, CEO at AptechMedia.
“Turkey has more than 80% of hyper-casual game studios majorly due to Zynga investments in the past as they acquired Peak Games, Rollic, etc. and this created a lot of success stories and opportunities for game developers,” says Batuhan. The statement was met with another surprising one when he mentioned how big game publishers like Vodoo, Homa Games, Supersonic have started hiring Turkish business developers in the games markets that have created employment opportunities, and its foreseen in 2022 that there will be a lot of casual and mid-core games coming up!
Fahad further dived into MENA gaming insights and emphasized immersive technologies like VR, AR, Metaverse as the new push in the industry that will incur huge investments in the future. He mentioned his venture that provided location-based entertainment and how chemistry games (where you play with chemicals and molecules emerge) helped his son to understand thermodynamics and ace his exams! He talked deeply about his company’s shift towards educational games during covid times to make the world a better place and cope with mental distress. The gist of his conversation was beautiful when he expressed his mission of making AAA quality games on “how to beat hunger and poverty and sustainable developing goals etc. to empower and incentivize children with the knowledge that would ultimately help the world”.
Luke continued with some hefty insights on the Chinese Game Market where he mentioned that in lieu of stringent laws and regulations in the country the gaming industry is very difficult to enter unless your game is multimillion like Garden Escape. There is a lot of legwork involved and patent rights are required, also there is no scope for hyper-casual games in China as somebody must have copied the game by the time you enter.
‘There is a lot of gaming potential in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia’ – Luke
Why not create games in Pakistan and invest millions for game production in South Asia?
The question addressed to Muhammad Hilal was met with a very concrete answer when he responded that the purchasing power of Gulf States, USA, and China is very high compared to Pakistan Games Market. He deliberated that not everybody has smartphones nor money to purchase or fund games so it’s wiser to target the game-growth countries that include Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam etc. Reine highlighted the lack of a proper education system that could teach video game production and how her aim is to create engaging game developers through her academics in the MENA region.
To know more about the in-depth gaming insights from our top-of-the-line leaders click below!