Session: How Dubai Plans to be a top 10 Gaming City by 2033 - Faisal Kazim, Dubai Future Foundation.

[Music] up next I would like to welcome the Dubai Future Foundation to the stage who are going to be talking about how Dubai plans to be a top 10 gaming City by 2033 uh good afternoon everyone uh my name is facal Cam I'm director of future foresight at Dubai Future Foundation I also lead the Dubai program for gaming and um yeah Mah would you like to introduce yourself please sure my name is madlan and I just Jo joined the Dubai

Future Foundation team to work with fael on the on the uh Dubai program for gaming and uh I am very fresh I just joined in the foundation around around three to four weeks ago um so yeah but I'm hoping to actually go ahead and be a part of this Vision that we are presenting thanks yeah um so about that Vision let me give just a quick overview because I know a lot of uh the people on at this conference are coming to Dubai for the first time I'll give a very quick overview of what Dubai Future Foundation does um and what the Dubai program for gaming is Dubai Future Foundation is a Dubai government organization and uh it has a very broad Mandate of trying to make Dubai a leading city of the future it's very ambitious as well so our initiatives are just as Broad and ambitious we started off with um area 2071 which is which was an incubator for startups um and several programs to try

and bring uh Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Dubai we ran the Dubai future accelerators um where we look to solve Dubai government's challenges by inviting some of the entrepreneurs around the world to come to Dubai and solve these challenges these were in-person cohorts so we actually provided accommodation flights etc for the founding teams to come to Dubai they they must have had some kind of um Prototype at least Pilots that they can come and apply to uh the by government's um uh challenges um we went from there we're also part of um a number of other initiatives related to research um and of course you must have seen on shik Zed Road uh the Museum of the future where we are looking to inspire people uh people in Dubai visitors of Dubai um to think about the future just uh to be inspired and to create um futures of their own so then what am I doing in gaming Maybe

maybe we should talk about how um how we started working in gaming why don't you start ma yeah mine is it's not a very traditional story not a very traditional story um because back then a a young woman growing up you know just liking to play games and it wasn't even fathomable to to want to get into gaming because the opportunities were not there back then um the educational programs were were not there to develop the skills that I thought were needed to to get a job in gaming plus there wasn't the encouragement for it um I was constantly told that I'm I'm probably going to end up jobless it's really not like the West it's not like the US where they have now degrees and programs and all these fancy engines and this is where the big gaming Studios that we all grew up with and love

reside um so my next best thing was advertising in coms um just because of the lack of opportunities and four years in it's just a complete lucky coincidence that I knew someone that worked for a video game distributor we're talking 10 years ago um they were leaving their job and I just happened to be looking for a job at the time and because I knew games meaning I like to play games and I knew how they worked um I managed to get that gig cuz he because they just needed someone to fill the position lo and behold 10 years later I I uh I found myself working for multiple Distributors locally moving on to International Publishers like Activision Blizzard followed by CD project red on The Witcher games and cyber Punk game and now I find myself in

doing gaming okay that's a perfect segue I guess to my story exactly did you get into gaming sure thing um actually the start was uh similar um so this was in 2002 2003 in this region very passionate about gaming so I wanted to create my own games I was trying to teach 3D Studio Max to myself there was no YouTube back then no free videos so I actually had these big thick books of you know how to how to design in 3D Studio Max um it was a steep learning curve but then um I tried to go to the best university that I could get into um the closest that I could get to um to game development was um computer science um it did not work out and also at the time like Mah mentioned the opportunities were just not there regionally um it was a very different um Dubai and UAE and Middle East back then um and so I switched to business administration very long career path

fast forward um how many years has it been since 20 almost wow 20 years ago so yeah fast forward 20 years I'm back into um the games industry uh my background has been in investment um I did investment management and then I tried to launch my own company in Dubai had a few struggles with that and I wanted to help other entrepreneurs overcome some of the struggles that I faced so I ended up at Dubai Future Foundation from there because of that very ambitious man uh Mandate of looking for industries of the future for Dubai to uh lead one of the uh industries that came up was of course metaverse and the Dubai metaverse strategy was launched and after that it was about gaming and um gaming was very unique in the sense that it was we recognized it as a significant industry um everyone knows it's about worth about $200 billion globally and yet there was very little regionally that was being done in in terms of development and

Publishing there was plenty of um tournaments there were plenty of um um Esports tournaments events but not that much in terms of um the rest of the 198 billion so Esports was worth about 200 $2 billion the rest of gaming $198 billion so we wanted to um develop a strategy a program to make Dubai a leading city of the games industry by 2033 in line with Dubai's d33 strategy very ambitious program because we're starting almost from scratch so how do you create an ecosystem um it's it's a chicken and egg situation where it's hard for you to attract the established Studios to come to Dubai um or Publishers and then on the other hand um it's hard to um convince people that are considering career paths to follow the

career path in gaming in game development or game design because the the jobs don't exist the established Studios don't exist so our bet is that we're going to have a constant pipeline of game developers game designers coming out of Dubai um and then over the long run we hope to attract the various stakeholders in the gaming value chain to start um considering uh Dubai as a um you know as a place that they would like to um to set up shop um so yeah so that's my story and um Mah I don't know I mean you have so despite large established Studios not having significant presence here in Dubai you've still worked for some of the larger Studios how how did that happen mainly through networking and reputation that was the only way for me to to get on there radar because to them

they didn't really have a bigger focus on on the region for them to do an investment there the best that they could have done is to either work through the Distributors which is how I I got in contact with them they go through agencies to implement their activities whether it's events or PR or coms or to go ahead and handle uh or uh to hire an independent contractor um but it really took time for them to explore to get to the contractor bid um just because they AR so they used to call it the Emerging Market this region specifically along with turkey Russia India um the better the understanding got they started to call it opportunity markets um just a just a nicer branding um but still they were not committed to do the full investment of opening up a Middle East

office so they were okay with having an independent contractor on the ground treated as a full-time staff um but being their one man show on the ground so technically I was their comm's person but because of the ease of doing stuff with someone here you would find me promarketing retail SL partnership plus list Dev and then the list goes on um but because I went through that this is how my network got built I got to attend more and more events globally meeting more people getting my name out there and that's how I connect I got connected with the others and they started to hear about the region and um one funny thing that I keep on saying is that my job is to demystify what Dubai is or what the Middle East is because it's a constant Ed uh educational process to tell people that hey we can do stuff here we have

resources here we could even have talent here we're not a rare breed that's a great point demystifying this region I think um I think it's a very important point because you mentioned that people were not really sure about the region the larger Studios to have a large to have a significant experience here yet at this conference almost everyone I've spoken with has asked me like we want to move to Dubai how can we how can we do this what services are provided to us what's the ecosystem like so there's a significant interest here for people to either grow their own um uh presence you to have like a regional presence here or to maybe even relocate so do you think maybe having more of these events larger events would help demystify I mean if we can if we can really grab their attention and I think we have based on everything we've done done yesterday for example um you mind

elaborating yeah what we did yesterday so yesterday as a part of an event called gaming matters um we went and invited uh top-of-the line sea level industry uh um influencers and and CEOs of companies representatives from EA and Riot and tenson um just to elaborate on what the program is they of course gave a bunch of impressive talks about their experience and what they're doing and we were a part of it with our big announcement which is the gaming Visa which is a 10-e long Visa that we are granting to help people get established um within their careers of game development whether they're a developer or a designer uh an animator just to Kickstart this process um it is a part of the commitment that we have and it is I see that it is attractive it is it is crucial for

this point to make a statement I think this was a very very big deal to grab the attention to show them what what it is we can offer as a city Agreed 100% And I think um also experiencing Dubai and how um I don't want to say um so experiencing Dubai and maybe trying to see how it's um different to some of the other places around around us we always want to be complimentary to to our neighbors um you know so for example if one specific region is focusing very much on Esports that's great let's not try to do Esports 2.0 but rather let's try to to work on something that's complimentary to both helping that that neighbor with that focus on Esports um amplify their um their initiative while at the same time using that um the presence of those people at attending those Esports um

tournaments maybe to um achieve some of our targets as well so the entire region as a whole then um then benefits um and we can all Elevate um this ecosystem another point I think that is um there are two other points I know we don't have that much time one one thing that I wanted to touch on was um was um the layoffs globally do you have any thoughts on that me I don't like it and who and who really does um it is a trend that we have been seeing since last year and and it's still going um I would like it to stop but unfortunately it doesn't look like it's it's going to slow down at I think it's going to last up until the end of the year uh it is quite unfortunate to see that the that the momentum that they had built during Co time um kind of like crash the way that it is doing right now now but this also presents an

opportunity for us um while we establish this ecosystem there is a lot of talent out there um that are just looking for opportunities like the ones we're trying to build um there is no firm uh thing that we can go ahead and offer yet but that's the kind of that's the kind of talent that we would potentially like to to bring here to also teach people locally just how to do the exact same thing we're talking about people from epic and and Sega and EA and and Activision Blizzard with Microsoft it's it's an insane pool of talent but I do see it as a as a big opportunity yeah and you know it's almost like it's almost like it's time to rethink the whole game development cycle um in order to minimize the frequency of these layouts um future ways of working new platforms new ways

of publishing and um you know these are areas for us to explore going forward I look forward to hopefully um talking to some of you if you have any ideas on how we can make that happen and um for the people and the families that have been affected around the world how can we help them uh here uh by uh providing opportunities here in Dubai I think for sure um providing um you know events like these where people come to experience Dubai to see maybe it's actually not like what they thought it would be uh would help and um the other thing that I would add uh sorry to cut you off is that in order for us to create the ecosystem and and to know specifically what it is that we need to do we would need to speak to people like you in events like these to understand exactly what it is that is needed and and what uh this makes us know what it is that we need to do to offer what it is that you need so please we are located right at

the entrance over there come find us come speak to us if you have any thoughts and ideas and we will surely talk we would love to talk to you to include you within our Network we hold regular networking events as well to connect people together um whether it's gaming Publishers brands that want to get into the gaming sphere developers um so yeah make sure to talk to us thank you very much on that note I think we're going to end over here but please reach out to us if you have any questions thank you all very much thank you [Music]