"To get to any audience you have to be aware of their cultures and Africa is a place of many ancient cultures"

• "As AI has become easier to use and more valid with many tools, we've started using AI in our work"

Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan returns on November 9th and 10th, 2024, offering you a chance to gain insights into the world’s fastest-growing games market, MENA. As part of our run up, we interviewed AN Games Studio founder Ahmed Fawzy to discuss the company's current and future plans while shedding some light on the African market and the region's ongoing overlooked potential.

Fawzy spoke to us about the studio's localisation process and their plans to make a return to the B2B market.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us about AN Games Studio and what you’re up to right now.

Ahmed Fawzy: AN Games Studio is an Egyptian Game Studio providing the service of making 3D / 2D Cross-Platform games, VFX Videos, and AR/VR Applications. We are focused on providing Games development and application development services with the highest levels of customer satisfaction. At the same time, we care for our community and other game developers in the industry, and so we have a responsibility to teach, spread the word, and solve our community issues. 

Through our community group pages, we solve other technical issues and let them help each other as well and showcase their work. Most recently, we’ve developed a learning platform to teach game development courses and we have been authorised by Epic Games to teach Unreal Engine. 

How many staff do you currently employ and where are they based?

We are still a small indie studio. Outsourcing is the main method of work and the team varies between two two ten people. 

How do you prioritise resources between developing games and your other projects like 3D videos? 

Time and value factor together and give each project its priority. The smaller the time, the higher the value and reliability of the goal of the project, the higher priority it becomes.

Has there been a shift in how the studio operates? Your website states you're currently not accepting new projects. What's the state of play?

We focused on teaching and developing our own courses that help other developers during Covid, and we gradually returned back to accept new projects. Also the projects we do are B2B (developing games as a service) so some clients use their games away from the store, while other clients don't maintain the projects. Our job is done after the client takes the working project and they are free to use it the way they want. 

What are you doing to foster collaboration and recruit local talents?

We help other studios to announce their job opportunities through our community, also we send recommendations for talent that we received on CVs and portfolios. We also re-publish valid vacancies both locally and internationally and continue to encourage talents to share their work so they could be seen by others who might need them.

What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in the localisation process, and how have your games been received internationally outside the MENA region?

We haven't face any challenges yet in localisation. Usually work is requested in English, and when localisation is requested it is requested in Arabic (our native language) so it is easy for us to translate. So we've not yet been required to localise for languages other than Arabic and English. And if that happens we can use localisation services from proposals we've received. 

What are your thoughts on emerging technologies such as AI, AR and VR in gaming? And do you have plans to incorporate AI into your game development process? 

Most of the projects we have done were for AR and VR. As AI has become easier to use and more valid with many tools, we've started using AI in our work. We used AI through the design process in one of our latest games we developed for a client. And oftentimes we receive requests to integrate AI with the games we develop, so we've started doing that as well. 

Africa has a vast number of mobile users. What do you think is the key to tapping into this audience? And why do you think some still overlook the market despite its growth potential?

To get to any audience you have to be aware of their cultures and Africa is a place of many ancient cultures. This is especially true in Egypt and so audiences there are attracted to stories, legends and fantasy. So the more you present a good quality of work that doesn't always need to have good graphics but is a good representation with sense of art, the more you'll get their attention.

And also some still overlook the market due to lack of focus in the media and news. We are used to seeing more of the Western world on the media and the news than Africa. 

In terms of funding and support for gaming studios in MENA, what has been your experience navigating the funding landscape?

We haven't tried that just yet as I believe that we should have some great work to offer first - a project that needs to be funded. Although I've seen other indie studios succeed in that area, once AN Games has its own project in need of funding we'll then pursue funding for it.  

What are your plans for the second half of 2024? Is there anything new from you that we should look forward to?

2024 will be the smooth return for AN Games to the B2B market, and we expect to be working fully on education and game development as services to expand our learning platform. We'll be aiming to reach talent that wishes to enter the field as a career path.

Also we hope to create a great game that is owned and developed by AN Games that will be played by players across the globe.