Bio

In 15 years of professional work, I fulfilled various roles on the creative & commercial side of the games industry, dedicated to my life-goal of creating impact through games. Across my work in market research, developer community and marketing/distribution, I strove to deliver impactful and pioneering work with relentless quality, professionalism and creativity. As a research analyst in the Telecom, Media and Technology field (with Arab Advisors Group), I authored the very first market research reports on the MENA games market, providing many international companies with essential market data and insights to make decisions and set strategies for MENA go-to market. Some of the organizations that benefited from my work are: Electronic Arts, Nordic Game Program, Wargaming, Travian Games, and Media-Create. From 2011 to 2013, I worked with an Arabic game portal (GameTako) to build the Arabic game developer community around it. I successfully managed to connect the small local communities into one big active online community, and created Game Zanga the largest game jam in the region. Ongoing since 2011 and considered my most impactful work, Game Zanga attracted hundreds of developers and generated hundreds of game concepts. Last year alone, 500+ participants created 100+ games from 17 locations in 10 countries. Game Zanga attracted sponsorships from big names such as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Unity Technologies and Yoyo Games (GameMaker). In 2014, I co-founded Play 3arabi, a game publisher focused on the MENA market. My title was COO, and my responsibilities were to manage our main office in Amman, and to lead and build our marketing and user acquisition capacity from setting strategy to execution. I launched and marketed 10 mobile games, most notably the award-winning Kingdoms Online and Heidi: Girl of the Alps. In GDC 2018, I gave a warmly received, emotional microtalk about my journey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrVolZL4L1s