Gaming summit kicks off for young developers in Jordan

AMMAN — Aspiring game developers, on Saturday showcased their work before a local and international audience at the eighth annual Jordan Gaming Summit which kicked off at the King Hussein Business Park.

Under the title “Technology at its Best”, the two-day summit aims to “provide young developers with the opportunity to get recognised and flourish regionally and hopefully internationally”, according to Nour Khreis, one of the event’s organisers.

Funded by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD), the summit is a chance to display the year-long work of developers in the local industry, which includes 16 companies that employ more than 500 workers, according to KAFD.

“It’s hard not only for Jordanian developers, but for Arabs as a whole to get recognition, because 95 per cent of apps are in English, therefore limiting the chances of developers who don’t speak it,” said Samer Abbad, a game developer at Play 3arabi.

The gaming development sector, which according to key speaker Dave Bradley is worth more than $10.3 billion in the US alone, witnesses competition which is “fiercer than ever, as its requirements for those interested are as low as they have ever been”.

Acting from the notion that “it is no longer sufficient to simply put your application in the App Store and wait for the results”, as put by Bradley, the first day of the summit aimed at informing young developers about the best ways to market, launch and unleash their app’s full potential.

Featuring speakers from local, regional and international gaming-development companies, most of whom have used their experience in the sector to start their own companies, the event aims at benefitting the youth by allowing exchange with experienced speakers.

In addition to informative lectures and Q&A sessions, the event also hosts a number of competitions among young developers, such as “The App Challenge”, which features a number of different locally-formed teams that have created their own apps.