The Middle East: GDC Talk Enters New Frontiers in Gaming
Game Developer Conference talk will discuss challenges and opportunities in the Middle East.
TEL-AVIV, Israel – Feb 21, 2011 – As part of the GDC Localization Summit, Oded Sharon, CEO of Corbomite Games, will talk about the challenges and opportunities of the Middle East games market along with another speaker from the region. The talk will be held on February 28th, 2011 @ 5:25PM PST, Room 302, South Hall, Moscone Center, San Francisco.
Spanning over 23 countries with more than 75M internet users, and one of the fastest growing markets, the Middle East is mostly overlooked by game developers and publishers, especially since successfully localized titles have seen significant increases in sales over non-localized games.
“We gathered up a bunch of relevant examples, case studies and market data to present at the largest conference for game developers in the world,” said Oded Sharon, CEO of Corbomite Games. “We’re doing this so more publisher and developers see the Middle East as an additional and viable market for their games. We hope GDC will offer the platform for launching an aggressive campaign to draw more attention to the Middle East’s booming game development industry.”
The Middle East game market has grown exponentially year over year for the last 5 years, making it a viable place for localized games. The presentation will provide a brief overview of the Middle East market and its potential, deal with challenges and opportunities, and provide examples of successfully localized titles – both in and outside of the region.
Attendees will be exposed to the opportunities and differentiators of the games market across the Middle East. The presentation will highlight real examples of market experiences and opportunities across the Arabic and Hebrew speaking countries (population of 400+ million); for multiple platforms (Online, PC, Mobile).
The speakers will discuss challenges such as cultural differences, religious implications, language barriers, left-to-right writing, and will compare games to other mediums including TV, movies, books, and the press.
About Oded Sharon
Oded Sharon, Founder and CEO of Corbomite Games, is a veteran game programmer and designer with years of experience making games, recently for PC and iPhone/iPad. He has led the Israeli chapter of the IGDA for several years, and has been one of the organizers of the majority of Israel’s game developer conferences, meetups, social gathering, and other events. Oded has been involved in large scale game projects including the MMORTS Ballerium, and has worked for game publishers in Taiwan. In 2006, Oded founded Corbomite Games and he currently leads an immensely creative team of developers while they make two new episodic adventure game series: Zbang and Pizza Morgana, as well as games like Star Shipping Inc. Oded holds a BSC degree in computer science and physics from Tel-Aviv University, and an MBA from the Technion.
For more information, on Oded Sharon and Corbomite Games, please visit: http://corbomitegames.com
For more information about GDC please visit: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/12227
Contact information:
Corbomite Games
press@corbomitegames.com
Twitter: @corbomite
