Jordan’s talent pool offers significant potential for growth and innovation

• Jordan’s games industry is fueled by a young, tech-savvy population and smartphone penetration

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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 MENA coverage and run-up to the event, we caught up with Chickmania Entertainment head of studio Mustafa Swiedan, who spoke to us about the studio’s specialised training course for undergraduates, cross-platform aspirations and the challenges facing the games industry in Jordan.

PocketGamer.biz: Can you tell us a bit about Chickmania Entertainment and what you’re up to right now?

Mustafa Swiedan: Chickmania Entertainment is a leading game development studio located in Amman, Jordan. We are a group of gamers who create games that we’d like to play! Our main focus is midcore multiplayer games and we aim to become a major studio on an international level in the near future.

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

Currently, the team is at 23 people all based in Amman, Jordan. We aim to become a team of 30 by the end of 2024.

Tell us more about your specialised games program and how you work with local talent

Chickmania has always given a huge part of our efforts to helping the local community grow. We believe it is our duty to improve, help and guide aspiring young people to join the industry. Aside from taking on interns and training them in multiple disciplines, we supported two of our team members to co-found Jam3et Games, a local hub for all game development enthusiasts to guide and prepare them for the market. 

Our latest initiative and the thing we are most excited about is that we launched a specialised training course for undergraduates of the game design degree in An-Najah University in Nablus Palestine for the first time. Our primary objective is to prepare students with the necessary skills to shine in game development. 

We also make sure to guide them through the whole process as a team member and emphasise teamwork, project dynamics, commitment, and industry fundamentals to arm them up in the future while working on a project. And help build a foundation for game development in Palestine.

Tell us about your focus on mid-core games. What led to this strategic choice and how have your games been received internationally outside the MENA region?

Ever since Chickmania Entertainment started, we wanted to focus on multiplayer evergreen games that can span over longer periods of time and can be built upon. One thing we pride ourselves in is our multiplayer mechanics that we make sure is present in any game we work on.

We pay extra attention to giving the players a community to play with rather than just playing a game. Our longest running game Jackaro was released in 2018 and is still growing and its community has never been bigger! It is currently one of the top games in the MENA region. 

We have been solely focused on the MENA region and to elevate the level of tailor-made games towards it. We are planning on entering the international market in the near future as one of our games, Carrom, grew organically in India and rose to the top charts for a considerable period of time. 

You recently partnered with Tamatem Games? How did it come about and what has the experience been like so far? 

Tamatem is one of the leading game publishers in region and with the release of Tamatem Plus, their own payment gateway and solution to multiple underbanked areas in the region, it was a great opportunity to be able to partner with them and become the first developer from MENA region to join their platform. We are so excited for this partnership and are looking forward to building on it.

How do you prioritise resources between developing mobile games and your other projects such as creative marketing and video production?

Currently, Chickmania Entertainment and Chickmania Productions are separate entities operating in one holding group. It’s great because we mainly share the knowledge and the knowhow between both companies.

Talk to us about the changes you’ve observed in the local games industry and consumer behaviour towards games? Do you face localisation challenges in the region? 

It’s been an amazing journey so far! Today, the average user in the region is so sophisticated and demands a certain level of standards which pushed the whole industry to grow and improve and has driven an increase of local gaming studios opening up in the MENA region.

We usually do not face localisation issues. As we build our games optimised towards the local user, one challenge we usually face is the many dialects we have in the MENA region, and we make sure to tackle this issue in the earlier stages of development by keeping the language direct and straightforward in our games.

What do you see as the current opportunities and challenges facing the games industry in Jordan and the wider MENA region?

The games industry in Jordan and the MENA region is expanding, fueled by a young, tech-savvy population and growing smartphone penetration. Opportunities include a demand for culturally relevant games, government support, and a booming esports scene.

However, challenges such as limited funding, infrastructure issues, market fragmentation, and strong international competition persist. Despite these hurdles, the region’s emerging talent pool and increasing global investment interest offer significant potential for growth and innovation.

Tell us more about funding and support for gaming studios in MENA. What has been your experience navigating the funding landscape?

In Chickmania Entertainment we are completely independent and we have been lucky enough to never raise any funds as we have been growing organically and consistently year over year. In terms of funding and investment, we look for a partner who can help us grow, explore new opportunities in new markets and support our pipeline.

What are your plans for the rest of 2024 and the coming year?Are there any specific initiatives or projects on the horizon that we should look forward to?

Chickmania Entertainment, in its essence, has alway been a game development studio rather than a “mobile” game studio. And our aim in the near future is to transcend into cross platform mid-core multiplayer games as well as continuing the growth of our current mobile suite of games. We also have two new games in our pipeline that we are REALLY excited about!