(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Experts and industry leaders on Saturday highlighted the Kingdom as a "successful" regional hub for the digital gaming industry at the 2015 Jordan Gaming Summit, organized by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD).
More than 500 developers, programmers, industry stakeholders, experts, school and university students took part in the first day of the summit, held at the King Hussein Business Park, under the theme "How to Grow" in the presence of representatives of world-renowned companies in the industry, including Google, Sony and Dice.
At the opening of the summit, KAFD director Saeb Al Hassan said that upon directives of His Majesty King Abdullah II, the fund pays a special attention to empowering youth, harnessing their potential, motivating them, driving them to be innovative and providing them with new opportunities through partnerships with the private sector in several areas, especially when it comes to ICT, which is the largest growing sector in the national economy.
Al Hassan emphasized that the summit provides young people with the opportunity to exchange ideas and expertise, share experiences and explore opportunities to turn the ideas into income-generating projects in one of the fastest-growing industries globally in terms of revenues and technological development.
Al Hassan added that holding the Jordan Gaming Summit annually reflects the KAFD's commitment to providing young people with the opportunity to realise further successes in the digital gaming industry.
It also drives them to come together to build a Jordanian digital gaming sector that penetrates international markets and make Jordan a hub for this promising industry, especially since the Kingdom enjoys talented, innovative and capable human resources.
He noted that a true testimony to the fund's commitment in this regard is the Jordan Gaming Lab, which is one of the fund's programmes.
The lab provided more than 4,000 young Jordanians, aged eight years and more, with an opportunity to learn the basics of designing and developing digital games, said Al Hassan.
The lab not only equipped young Jordanians with necessary technical knowledge in the digital gaming industry, but also enhanced the spirit of teamwork among beneficiaries and strengthened values of cooperation, respect and trust amongst them, he said.
Nour Khrais, chairman of the Jordan Gaming Lab, one of the KAFD programmes, said revenues of the digital gaming industry are on the rise, especially revenues of games developed for mobiles and tablets as they are expected to reach $65 billion by 2016, which is three times higher than the volume in 2011.
Khrais attributed the rise in mobile gaming revenues to the increase in smartphones penetration, the advanced features and capabilities enabled by these devices, the growing percentage of Internet penetration, the opening of new markets in Africa and Asia and the establishment of a large number of small-sized companies in the industry.
"In spite of the limited resources in Jordan, the Kingdom is rich in innovative and talented human resources, whom we trust of being able to make Jordan a regional hub for gaming development in the Middle East," said Khrais.
Several sessions were held during the summit, including the plenary session on Growth in the Technology Sector presented by Maria Stukoff, Head of PlayStation First at Sony.
Rachad Admob, Mobile Apps Consultant at Google, presented another session on Growth in the App Market. Another session featured participants representing a group of Jordanian startups that tackled the issue of growth in the digital gaming industry in Jordan. The summit also featured a session that shed light on the issue of how to "Tap and Grow into International Markets." On the sidelines of the summit, an exhibition was held featuring Jordanian digital gaming startups and indie developers.
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