Shaheer Ahmed
The gaming industry has been blooming in Pakistan for quite some time. What comes as a surprise to most people is the fact that the Pakistani gaming industry is quite vibrant. It has an annual average of 25 million USD.
What makes this number truly fascinating is that it was close to zero back in 2005. When the first gaming industries were established in that year, there wasn’t any possibility of gaming growth. However, in recent decades the gaming industry has picked up numbers that nobody thought were possible.
The potential of this industry has recently caught the attention of Google. The tech giant showed great interest in the gaming potential that the state of Pakistan has shown. Google has taken initiatives for the gaming industry in Pakistan. In February 2022, Google opened the first Gaming Growth Lab (GGL) in Pakistan.
GGL is an accelerator program that seeks to nurture Pakistan’s gaming talent. The program will provide full support to Pakistan’s top mobile gaming companies. The first phase of this program has already taken place. It was a 5-week education phase that was attended by over 250 participants from nearly 57 companies.
GGL has started its second phase, during which these 57 participants will once more undergo an 8-week virtual support program. The purpose of this training will be to help the participants identify important business challenges and meet them effectively. The experts will familiarize themselves with Google Play, Google Cloud, measurement, and export where they will learn the art of game development from the professionals of the industry.
Farhan Qureshi, Google’s Regional Director in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, has expressed great optimism about the initiative. He has said that it is the aim of Google to put the Pakistani gaming industry on the map of the world.
The participants have shown potential results already after attending the sessions organized by Google. Codematics, a Pakistani-based app company has launched two games on Google Play Store, after attending the first session. Both games have followed the monumental success.
Google’s plans for the gaming industry of Pakistan bear great potential. Besides the virtual sessions, Google further plans on launching Think Games Pakistan, a gaming, virtual event on 21st and 22nd June 2022. The virtual event will become a meeting point for all the gamers and virtual experts in Pakistan.
