Gaming İstanbul 2023 Event Wraps Up

Gaming İstanbul Event Wraps Up!

Gaming İstanbul, held for the seventh time this year under the main sponsorship of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and its affiliates Medya A.Ş. and OGEM, brought together gaming fans from all over Türkiye at the Prof. Dr. Kadir Topbaş Performance and Art Center in Yenikapı on September 22-24. On the second day of Gaming İstanbul, guest Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's Ekrem İmamoğlu met with local game development studios, indie developers and gaming fans. Ekrem İmamoğlu, who also got the chance to see and play newly released games, said, "spending time with the young people was a lot of fun."

Gaming İstanbul brought visitors together with games spanning many platforms, from PC to console, mobile games to esports tournaments. Visitors attending the event also took part in esports matches and tournaments with prizes, while spending an enjoyable time meeting famous streamers. Local cosplay talents also put on a very colorful show on the event's first day, showing off their skills in the cosplay competition.

"We brought together all the stakeholders of the gaming world"

Assessing the event, Gaming İstanbul Co-Founder Meriç Eryürek said: "Gaming İstanbul has reached a very important position in terms of showcasing Türkiye's gaming industry and its players. This year, just like in previous years, we brought together all the stakeholders of the gaming world, from players to streamers, from indie developers to investors and gaming enthusiasts. Türkiye holds a very important position in the gaming industry with 36 million active players, and this year investors, game publishers, studio executives and marketing/sales experts mainly attended from European, Asian and American countries. Many globally important names in the gaming industry, such as Execution Labs Co-Founder Jason Della Rocca and Remote Control Productions CEO Hendrik Lesser, attended as speakers and shared their experiences." Assessing the gaming sector, Eryürek added that there are measurements putting the global market size between 175-187 billion dollars, roughly around 180 billion dollars. He said there's no exact data on the size of the Turkish gaming market, but the last published figure showed it topped 1 billion dollars in 2020. "If you ask my estimate, I'm confident we've reached a size of 1.4 billion dollars."

New games made their debut at Gaming İstanbul

Many new games prepared by Türkiye's talented game studios had their launches at Gaming İstanbul. Upgrade Entertainment's Concubine, a PC-console game about the story of concubines who protected the Sultan in the Ottoman era, also had its first launch at GIST and was met with intense interest from gaming fans. Meanwhile, new games such as Compass of the Destiny: İstanbul, Cardboard Town, Land of the Vikings, Diriliş Ertuğrul, Mayhem Brawler II: Best of Both Worlds, Castle of Alchemists, Book Warrior and Pile Up also met gaming fans at Gaming İstanbul.

Famous streamers met their fans at Gaming İstanbul.

Gaming İstanbul, which as every year hosted a large crowd of streamers, gave a special surprise to their followers this year as famous streamers Tuğkan Gönültaş (@Elraenn), Can Sungur (@csnaber), Tuna Aksen (@pintipanda), Alp "H1vezZz!" Kocaman, Koray Birand, Mesut Çevik, Elanur, Mert Yılmaz (rraenee) and Burak Kenan Öztürk (holmes.jpg) met with visitors at the Gaming İstanbul Influencer Stage. Cosplayers brought colorful moments to Gaming İstanbul... In the Gaming İstanbul 2023 Cosplay Competition, participants brought various game, anime, cartoon and film characters to life with their own unique costumes. In the competition held on the main stage, 25 contestants became finalists, and the top three cosplayers were announced on Sunday, September 24.

The world's leading game developers shared their experiences

Gaming İstanbul's official B2B event, Indieway, brought gaming professionals together at Gaming İstanbul. During Indieway, which started a day before Gaming İstanbul on September 21 and continued for 4 days until September 24, many expert local and foreign gaming professionals shared their experiences. An award ceremony was also held as part of Indieway. The game Emberbane came in first place, New Cycle placed second, and the game Leila was awarded third place. Alongside the business workshop titled "The secrets of financing and scaling your studio," held together with respected gaming industry figure Jason Della Rocca, Indieway also featured speakers whom the gaming world follows with great interest, such as Blay Games Art Director Maya Bora, Upgrade Entertainment Level Designer Balım Alpay and Remote Control Productions CEO Hendrik Lesser. This year, Indieway, a business development event and ecosystem for the gaming sector, held seminars and business development meetings with around 3,000 important local and foreign attendees.

The only gaming event to offer free space to indie developers

Gaming İstanbul, the only gaming event to reserve free space for indie developers, gave free space to 36 games based on the quality of applications this year, bringing together over 50 indie developers with visitors and investors in total. The developers held professional meetings, giving them a chance to find new publishers/investors for their games.

Many important brands, games and organizations, such as Medya A.Ş, OGEM, Samsung, Gaming.Gen.TR, GameDev, GamesUP, Microsoft, Turkcell, GeForce NOW powered by GAME+, Turkpin, Upgrade Entertainment and Unity, took part in Gaming İstanbul, whose main sponsor was Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.