Program for WN Conference Abu Dhabi’25 announced, with talks from Ubisoft, Mundfish, and more

The next WN Conference will take place in Abu Dhabi on February 11-12. The event’s preliminary program is already available. In addition, it will feature a panel discussion on working in the MENA region and a special keynote on growth opportunities in the Middle East.

Both days of the conference will be held in two streams — from 11:00 to 16:30 (GMT+4). Most keynotes are expected to last 25-30 minutes. The exception will be panel discussions, which will take an hour each.

Below are the key talks of the conference’s first day:

Saifi Ismail, director and president of Yalla Group, will discuss the process of building a social network (Yalla) and gaming ecosystem (Yalla Ludo) for local audiences in the region;
A public interview with Mundfish head Robert Bagratuni, conducted by Yulia Lebedeva, partner and executive director of WN Media Group. She will ask Robert about how to keep balance creative and business sides of game development;
A panel discussion with Triple Dragon’s Pieter van der Pijl, FUTURA.digital’s Alexandra Kurdyumova, and Women in Games’ Lucy Chow on building business relationships in the Middle East games industry;
Nick Phipps, senior game designer at Ubisoft Belgrade, will discuss elements in video game design that need to be considered when setting up monetization elements.

The second day of WN Conference Abu Dhabi’25 will feature the following keynotes and talks:

A panel discussion on gaming market trends with AD Gaming’s Sultan Al Riyami, Mundfish’ Robert Bagratuni, Holodeck Ventures’ Paul Dawalibi, Sandsoft’s David Fernandez Remesal, Shorooq Partners’ Sali Elagab, and GEM Capital’s Kirill Gursky;
A talk by Sarah Golshahi, business development manager at Cafe Bazaar, on unlocking niche opportunities in MENA’s games Industry;
Player One Consulting founder and CEO Chris Bain, who was previously responsible for promoting Xbox in Europe for almost 10 years, will discuss working on product strategy;
Nikita Matzokin, executive director at MGVC, will discuss new opportunities and approaches available to mobile game developers in a shifting market.

All information about the program and other aspects of the future event can be found on the WN Conference Abu Dhabi’25 website.

We would like to remind you that this is WN Media Group’s second major event in Abu Dhabi. Exactly one year ago, the debut WN Conference Abu Dhabi’24 took place, bringing together about 500 guests.