18 - 20 April 2025
Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC)
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INDIE'S @ GAMES CON 2018
The Middle East has seen an insurgence in Indie Developers over the past few years, as more gaming development talent has emerged with full pursuit of making a career out of their favourite hobby growing up. Middle East Games Con 2018 was a host to a number of different indie developers, all with their different ongoing and finished projects. Deeragaming Entertainment was on hand to interview and discuss with the developers their work and how they've found Middle East Games Con as a platform to showcase it.Special thanks to Abdelaziz Malek - Deergaming Entertainment, who wrote the article below.
As the Deeragaming Entertainment team, we covered Middle East Games Con 2018 and had the chance to meet and interviewv the Indie Game Developers during the event. Games Con event was a great opportunity for the developers where showed their work to the visitors' from the Region.
We began with Kashkool Games, owned by Omran and Haroon Al Mansoori, which boasted a vast collection of finished games. Sheba: A New Dawn is a game developed by the Kashkool Games, a single player game designed using the Unity 3D engine. "Middle East Games Con 2018 is a great chance for us to reach our Arab audience in the Middle East." Some of the obstacles Kashkool faces include the industry being relatively new and unsupported by investors in the region, making the development of such games both expensive and time consuming.
This was further supported by another developer, Maitha, who developed Way of Saru, an adventure indie game created by Unity engine and Procreate. Maitha believed that creating a game in the region is intricate, the market is still adapting to the introduction of these independent projects, with most of the gaming market coming through multinational corporations and retailers that cater to gamers in the Middle East.
One of the exceptional studios we interviewed was Fishy Tushy, owned by Ahmad Al Natshe, developer of Shadow Dreams, a game that was developed using the Unreal Engine (several games including Fortnite, Tekken, Kingdom Hearts and others were designed by this engine), being the only developers using it at Games Con 2018. "This event is a great opportunity for us to test our creativity and product, making the most out of it by being exposed to a huge number of gamers under one roof." To Fishy Tushy, the event was a success as it managed to assist the studio in cracking down on the recurring faults within the game, and receiving valuable feedback on improvements. Indeed it was a long way to reach to this stage, as Ahmad claimed that it took him 3 years to reach this level of production. Ahmad is dedicated to turning his passion for a gaming into a full time career to further explore his innovation and ideas of expanding his portfolio.
Overall, Middle East Games Con 2018 was the perfect venue for independent developers to bring in their current projects, showcase it using demos and illustrations, and engaging with their audience in one place that puts gaming and creativity out to the rest of the region.
Such an event plays a crucial role in nurturing the talent scattered across the region, and raising a voice for innovation and initiatives for all dreamers to pursue a career in gaming (or anything related to that) as this was the platform for the exchange of knowledge, technology, processes, and mostly love for the gaming industry.
You can view the video below for a more in depth interview with the Indie Developers at Middle East Games Con 2018.
