Turkish gaming industry received the most investment in 2021

In the “Digital Games Workshop” organized in cooperation with the Information Technologies Educators Association, BTK, Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education and Ankara Education Platform; attention was drawn to the importance of digital games and what needs to be done. Speaking at the opening of the program, Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan stated that digital games are one of the most important parts of digitalization and said: “With the effect of the pandemic, the digital gaming industry reached 175.8 billion USD in the global game market in 2021. “Mobile Games” account for 79 billion USD, “Console Games” for 49.2 billion USD and downloadable computer games for 33.3 billion USD and the rest is for tablet and browser computer games. The gaming industry in Turkey continued to grow in 2021, as it does every year. In our country, the revenue from digital games increased from 880 million USD to 1.2 billion USD. 600 million USD of this was obtained from mobile games. Compared to the previous year, investments in the game industry increased 20 times, from 13.1 million to 266 million USD. The Turkish gaming sector was the sector that received the most investment in 2021. The figures show that we are faced with a constantly developing and advancing sector.”

As a new career opportunity, e-Sports is among the rising trends of our time

Sayan underlined the need to expand the game economy and Turkey’s market share by addressing games with different titles and said: “We are an important and critical market for digital games. Therefore, we should make good use of these opportunities. I think that our young people’s individual talent and game curiosity is a great advantage for us. That’s why we are ready to support any kind of work to be done in this field.” Sayan noted that areas such as e-sports are very common, especially among young people under the age of 30, and said: “At this point, the e-Sports dimension, where games are integrated with technology, has a very important place. Digital games designed by game makers or in which traditional sports are transferred to electronic media are organized as e-sports organizations by moving to the competition dimension. Seen as a new career opportunity, especially by the younger generation, e-Sports has become one of the rising trends of our time and has grown tremendously when both its economic value and the number of participants are evaluated. We are doing our best to make better use of this potential.”

Play Safe (guvenlioyna.org.tr) Portal was developed with educational games

BTK President Ömer Abdullah Karagözoğlu pointed out that even digital immigrants who grew up with a traditional game understanding and were later acquainted with digital technologies play digital games today, and said: “In addition to the pleasure and excitement of playing, the ease of accessing games and game objects has started to keep digital games more and more in the center of attention. There is no doubt that digital games have many positive aspects and contributions. However, content such as violence, obscenity and incitement to gambling in games lead the harm that digital games can cause, especially on children and young people. Digital games are an area that needs to be studied and analyzed in every aspect.” Emphasizing that they consider all kinds of production, design and awareness-raising efforts in this field very important, Karagözoğlu said: “We need to look at the risks of digital games from different angles. For example, spending time playing games together in terms of parent-child relationship can increase both family interaction, learning by playing, and cooperation and problem-solving abilities. Therefore, the opportunities provided by digital games should not be ignored. We, as BTK, organize many trainings, seminars and workshops on digital games in order to take advantage of these opportunities. Play Safe (guvenlioyna.org.tr), an information and review project for digital games, is one of them. We have developed this portal with a variety of educational games that will appeal to young children. We carried out analysis, awareness-raising and information studies that deal with digital games in all aspects, especially their positive and negative aspects.”

e-Sports should quickly enter the agenda of educators

In the morning session of the event, three separate seminars were held to increase the awareness of the educators who participated in the event voluntarily about digital games. Information Technologies Educators Association President Burcu Yılmaz shared her presentation on effects of digital games from an educator perspective, TOGED (Turkish Game Developers Association) Vice President Özgür Karayalçın on digital game development and game industry, TESFED (Turkish Esports Federation) Esports Education Coordinator Hacı İhsan Sağlam on e-Sports and e-Sports training with the participants. In the afternoon session of the event, the positive and negative effects of digital games, digital game development trainings and e-Sports were evaluated with educators and experts divided into two groups. BTK Vice President Dr. Mustafa Küçükali contributed to all processes of the event.

Pointing out that the game is an important source of development and entertainment that offers children the opportunity to learn starting from early childhood, Head of Information Technologies Educators Association Burcu Yılmaz drew attention to the following points: “Games played for different purposes such as winning, acquiring cognitive and physical skills, socializing, experiencing life, communicating, self-actualization and reputation have a great place in the lives of children and adults. From past to present, from culture to culture, the games, the places played, the tools used, the game elements and the rules have changed constantly and have become digitalized in a remarkable way today. Game preferences have changed and digital games have become widespread rapidly due to reasons such as the inadequacy of safe playgrounds offered to children, the inability to transfer traditional games to new generations, easy access to digital games, the increase in ownership of technological tools and the differentiation of game perception. Emphasizing that as digital games become widespread, their sectoral power also grows, Yılmaz said: “The digital game industry gained momentum as the audience, who started playing digital games in childhood, reached adulthood and entered business life and was able to spend money on the game industry. This acceleration; increased once again with the epidemic period, the financial and moral power of the sector made it necessary for educators to evaluate this sector from different perspectives. The world gaming industry, with its volume approaching 200 billion USD, has reached the number of viewers approaching half a billion. For this reason, e-Sports should quickly enter the agenda of educators.”