The biggest game festival of the region - "GameSummit Summer 2024" took place in Baku on June 1-2 with the main partnership of the Innovation and Digital Development Agency. The summit is being held in Azerbaijan for the third time and brings together digital creative experts, game studios and e-sports enthusiasts. At the event, experts from Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Kyrgyzstan, the USA, Turkey and other countries gave speeches on the topics of modern trends and world experience in video game creation.
In the framework of "GameSummit Summer 2024", the "Indie Game Award" competition was held among game studios, supported by IRIA and organized by the Azerbaijan Game Developers Association. The studios competed in the contest in 3 nominations - "The most interesting game", "The most unique game" and "The game with the best graphics". "Funtick Games", "Nomadman Game Studio" and "Meogen Studio" studios won first place in respective nominations. In addition, studios that took their first steps in game development in the nomination "Best start" participated in the competition. In this category, "ExTerra Studio" and "StyLight Games" studios, as well as the "Tiny Games Studio" team from Gusar advanced to the finals and won in the end.
Agahuseyn Ahmadov, Head of IRIA's Investments and Ecosystem Support Department: "This summit will greatly contribute to the game industry in the country gaining access to global investment opportunities and making Azerbaijan a leading center in this direction. We can confidently say that the holding of GameSummit is an indicator that Azerbaijan is moving towards a leading position in game development in the region.
At the event, the presentation of the company "Xsolla", which brings video game publishers and developers together on its platform, provides different monetization, payment, distribution and "cloud" solutions, as well as other services for creative game creators, took place. It was reported that the company plans to implement a number of events and programs for the development of the game sector in Azerbaijan.
It should be noted that game studios supported by IRIA presented their projects in the "Indie game" zone called "Powered by IDDA" at the festival. So, 10 studios demonstrated their projects in the game zone.
