Superstar Session: Game Development 101 Opening Ceremony

i'd like to introduce someone to stage who basically established uh the gaming lab many of the activities um uh all whilst simultaneously being the ceo of his own successful publishing studio uh maisel ward so uh please welcome after a short video uh that the very wonderful nor cries [Music] [Music] [Music]

[Music] hello hello chris hello nor how are you how are you sir i'm doing well thank you thank you oh look at that amazing backdrop i've missed petra every every time the last four or five years i've been there it's an incredible incredible place if we cannot meet uh in real at least to bring a bit of good memories to uh to the pocket gamer partnership that we did last year and and the support that we've been seeing together uh with with yourself and all the community uh around the gaming who gave jordan in the past ten years the support that is needed to uh to do what we are doing yeah no well

thank you very much and i mean you know you are the man without you you've helped bring us in and we we're we're honored to be part of it it's been it's been an absolute pleasure so far hopefully we can continue to to support and do what we can um uh to help grow this incredible uh community that you've kind of you know you've fought so hard to to establish i'm gonna push off into the background for a little while now and let you take the stage nor cause i know everybody is better hearing my voice um and then my lovely uh my my lovely assistant assistant colleague while i said assistant kill me dave will take take over the comparing for the rest of uh this morning but i'll be back later on so i'm going to hand the stage to you and disappear um yeah over tuna thank you thank you chris thank you um again and very happy to be part again with a pocket gamer uh event and uh the pocket gamer uh digital this year is is really recovering all the uh the challenges we have in the industry when it c when

it comes to covered and the non-physical activities that took out all the interaction that we needed uh 10 years ago here in jordan we took a real commitment towards building and accelerating the growth of video gaming scene here in jordan and and bridging jordan and the game developers here in the mena with international um basically game scene and with the support of the king abdullah fund we managed to build the gaming lab uh the gaming summit that we today we celebrate the 10th uh year and we are happy doing this second second year with pocketgamer and hopefully and uh you know for the future we will keep on building on on the successes of the previous years um and the passion of the game developers today you see a lot of uh publishers uh nd developers a lot of activities

that is happening here in in in jordan what we are trying to send as a message today through uh all the activities we we try to highlight uh in in in jordan is is this is the time to bridge as game studios publishers towards the mena region and here in jordan we can help you uh reaching to your target because we have been building uh the infrastructure that is needed to accelerate your presence here in the region and if you are a game developer and and you are looking to publish your game we enjoyed and we have few successful publishers who basically uh put their name in in in in the international scene pro probably you hosted as pocket game in the past few days play arabic games where there are a lot of game developers game studios also being

building games successful games working with publishers uh within the region outside the region and that's the time um jordan unfortunately we uh you know we have this mediterranean middle eastern culture with hosting people in in jordan we miss this this year with uh with them covered and all the restriction hopefully the next year we will be able uh to uh join again and and have the event in amman uh i basically uh today we will have a very uh you know they will tell us more about the program uh we will have a very uh active uh sessions we have uh also uh speakers who basically help us you know to build more and more in the knowledge that we need as game developer again thank you very much on on um you know i i would like to thank all the team the team behind the team in

the green room working with us trying to make sure that this day uh as we celebrate the 10th year of the gaming summit to be as perfect as as we always worked on on showing the gaming summit and and the jordan image in the gaming industry thank you guys and hopefully it will be fun and um i'm here for any question and uh please um let's let's let's do this as as a perfect setup as every year thank you thank you guys dave i i oh hello there sorry i was muted no that's a brilliant introduction thank you very much can you hear me okay uh yes i do perfect here we go here i come here to introduce you as dave or the assistant of chris james glamorous glamorous assistant please that's uh uh so yeah welcome everyone i know great what what a fantastic introduction thank you yeah we um we're very impressed with the work that the gaming lab and the king

abdullah the second fund for development are doing in jordan it's been our privilege to to be a part of it for the last few years and so yeah hopefully next year once the covered crisis is passed we'll be back and and seeing everyone in person um but for now it's a wonderful opportunity to uh conduct some of this learning and some of these meetings over uh over zoom um so i can talk you through some of the activities that's taking place today and then um uh we the schedule starts in earnest at ten o'clock in the uk time which i think is midday in amman we have people joining us from all over the world so as well as our friends from the mena region and jordan in particular we've had 71 countries attending pocket gamer connects uh digital number four this uh this this week um so uh uh nor actually what i was gonna say is you've um before i launch into talking about the uh the schedule a little bit and and set us up for the the morning um just um this afternoon just um can

you tell us a little bit more about the the app challenge how many uh teams are we expecting to welcome to the stage this afternoon do you have a number yes we have um so that challenges is you know the best thing that happened to me in the past 10 years on a personal level and a professional level this is an interaction we do with schools between 14 and 16 years old we challenge them to build games they have zero knowledge about gaming they take five days crash course to to learn unity uh uh 3d uh all the aspects of game development publishing etc and we challenge them with a topic to build the game within one one and a half months this year we will have nine teams that reach the final uh final stage uh it was all about uh covered and and how you know the reflection that they see and and how they can work with games to uh build awareness uh towards the life we are living today um

so yeah it's it's a it's a nice uh you know those those passionate kids who wants basically to be in the industry through the past 10 years dave we saw a lot of those young jordanians who basically now are game developers or in game studios working games so i'm personally happy to manage to you know to be uh this evil guy who basically converted people into gaming because we you know in the past gaming was a bad bad thing to you know to to work with so yeah it's it's it's my my you know it's my uh closest things to my heart when it comes to events we manage through uh the support of the king abdullah fund uh through the gaming lab and all the activities we are doing that's amazing yeah wonderful it's a clearly a passion project for you and something that's of incredible value and as you say i think the value of games and the games industry has increased with time and that's a very good thing you're right i think

many years ago games was thought of as perhaps a a kind of a trivial career to pursue but games themselves were thought of as toys but we've come to realize that games are you know one of the biggest media forms in the world one of the fastest growing media forms um the careers that are in the games industry are incredibly technical they're incredibly creative um they're the value of games to the economy of countries like jordan and the uk it's one of our biggest exports in the uk too um it can't be can't be overestimated and here in this year of um of the pandemic crisis uh we've seen games industry becoming one of the industries that has managed to thrive because people are playing games when they're at home and um the games industry itself i think the latest news figures were something like 170 billion dollars globally which is uh which is up several percent on last year and so it's a it's actually looking like a like a very uh stable and successful career path for uh for people more more even than it was it has been for years but even this

year it's it's you know it's a great place to be working so that that's excellent thanks no so we'll see you we'll see you again later you