Mobidictum Conference 2025 is coming stronger than ever with its PC and console lineup, featuring industry-leading voices of the industry, the most influential figures in the Turkish gaming scene, and rising indie game developers.
Here is a look at our beloved and esteemed lineup!
Wargaming
Wargaming is a global games company known especially for its large-scale multiplayer franchises like World of Tanks and World of Warships. Founded in 1998, it has grown into one of the major players in free-to-play PvP and live-service titles.
Solo Session: How to Make Brands, Not Games: How to Apply a Branding Approach to Games
In this session at Mobidictum Conference 2025, Aliaksei Sasnitski of Wargaming will present “How to Make Brands, Not Games”. The talk explores how game developers can think beyond individual game features and mechanics — to build a strong, enduring brand identity. Sasnitski will discuss branding principles, community perception, long-term engagement, and how aligning every creative decision (art, narrative, mechanics, support) around a cohesive brand helps games stand out and last.
Aliaksei is a LiveOps Designer & Producer at Wargaming, with experience in game design, creative direction, and board games. He has been involved in workshops like “Creativity out of nothing: let’s create a new game idea out of thin air” and was a judge for DevGAMM Awards 2024.
Why This Talk Matters
Having worked for eight years in branding and advertising and another four years in game development, I can now combine my experience at conferences and speak on topics that bridge the two fields.
On my observations, companies don’t always pay enough attention to branding when working on games. Some life hacks and techniques may come in handy.
Aliaksei Sasnitski
Raw Fury – Codfish Academy
Raw Fury is an indie publisher known for artsy, narrative-rich PC & console titles. Established in 2015 by Jónas Antonsson, Raw Fury’s identity leans toward games with personality, strong creative vision, and relationships with development teams that go beyond just contracts.
Codfish Academy, founded by industry veterans including Ricardo Flores Santos, is a school for aspiring game developers built around Unreal Engine training, combining hands-on practical skills with mentorship and a focus on what today’s game industry actually wants.
Fireside Chat: Choosing the Right Game to Make – Understanding Customer Value Proposition
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Ricardo Flores Santos and Jónas Antonsson will explore how to define what makes a game truly valuable to players before building it. They’ll dig into how to find the intersection between what developers want to build, what players want to play, and what the market is willing to reward — in short, how to choose the right game idea that balances creativity, commercial viability, and community interest.
Ricardo Flores Santos / Codfish Academy — With deep experience in game development (mobile, PC, and console), production, studio leadership, and accelerator/mentorship roles, Ricardo helps train new talent and guide developers in building games that fit real industry needs. He’s a key voice on aligning educational training with what publishers and players expect.
Jónas Antonsson / Raw Fury — Founder of Raw Fury, Jónas has guided a publisher that often backs smaller, distinctive games — the kind that may not conform to mainstream formulas but which command respect, attention, and loyal audiences. He’s spoken before about choosing projects not just for potential profit but for brand, community, narrative integrity, and value for players.
Why This Talk Matters
- It helps indie / smaller developers avoid wasted effort: starting with “what do players care about” and “what is my value proposition” lets you build more focused prototypes, improve pitchability, and reduce risk.
- Understanding the value proposition affects all stages: concept, design, art, marketing, and scope. It can guide theme, target audience, monetization model, and even platform choice.
- For studios with limited budgets, clarity on customer value means using resources smarter: refining core loops, prioritizing features that matter most, and avoiding feature creep.
2Medya – Red Axe Games – Balas Games – Teneke Kafalar Studios
These Turkiye-based studios represent growth stories in transitioning from mobile to PC.
2Medya Game Studio, founded by Engin Ulukurtlar, has published dozens of mobile games and is also acting as a Steam publisher, helping mobile titles find a place on PC.
Red Axe Games, co-founded by Furkan Haksever, has made its name by developing and publishing simulation and mobile titles and is increasingly focusing on PC releases.
Balas Games, led by Mertol Altınay, is another example: the studio’s debut PC simulation, Recycling Center Simulator, has shown that there is both appetite and market opportunity for more complex experiences beyond mobile.
Teneke Kafalar Studios, with Mehmet Çakan, contributes a complementary voice from studios balancing scale, creative identity, and platform choices.
Panel: Hypercasual to Steam: Why mobile developers turn into PC?
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, this panel will address why mobile game developers are increasingly exploring Steam and other PC platforms. Panelists will discuss what drives this shift: creative/design ambitions, monetization differences, audience expectations, and how mobile devs can adapt to PC’s discovery, expectations, and production demands.
Why This Panel Matters
- Allows mobile developers to understand what changes when targeting PC: higher expectations for control schemes, visuals, community feedback, and post-launch support.
- Offers lessons on discoverability & monetization on PC/Steam vs mobile store ecosystems. What works, what doesn’t.
- Demonstrates that PC offers opportunities for greater creative complexity, longer player sessions, narrative or depth that hypercasual often can’t support.
- Helps developers see strategies for transitioning: what to keep, what to adapt (team size, marketing, QA, scope) so the jump to PC isn’t too rocky.
Devotion Interactive
Based in Turkiye, Devotion Interactive is a PC and console publisher dedicated to supporting indie developers. The company focuses on helping studios launch globally on platforms like Steam and consoles by providing publishing, marketing, operations, and community support. With a portfolio of hundreds of titles, Devotion Interactive plays a key role in bringing Turkish indie games to international audiences.
Solo Session: The Rise of Indie PC Games – How to Stand Out in 2025
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Devotion Interactive will spotlight the evolving indie PC landscape. Head of Operations & Publishing Serdar Baran Ateş will discuss how developers can differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market. His talk will cover store optimization, marketing strategies, and community building, critical elements for ensuring a successful release in 2025.
Over the past decade, Serdar has overseen the publishing of 300+ games, specializing in marketing, advertising, and distribution on Steam and consoles. He has managed campaigns generating billions of global impressions, helping both Turkish and international developers amplify their visibility and grow their communities. His mission is to help indie developers overcome discoverability challenges and achieve global reach.
Why This Talk Matters
Indie PC gaming is thriving, but also more competitive than ever. This session will give developers concrete strategies to:
- Optimize their Steam store pages for maximum visibility.
- Build and engage communities that support long-term growth.
- Leverage marketing and advertising tools to stand out in a saturated market.
- Understand how operations and publishing partners can remove roadblocks for smaller teams.
For indie devs aiming to launch in 2025, Serdar’s insights offer a roadmap for turning creativity into sustainable success.
Datahumble
Founded to give PC and console developers better visibility into the market, Datahumble is a data-driven platform built to help game creators, publishers, and investors make smarter decisions.
The platform tracks and analyzes Steam wishlists, store reviews, streaming performance, and community sentiment, providing actionable insights that go beyond sales numbers. With its roots in Turkiye’s indie scene, Datahumble is designed for developers who want to understand how their games are performing and how to position themselves in a competitive market.
Panel: Insight-Driven Dev: Data Points as Creative Compass
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, we will host a panel that brings together industry experts to discuss how data can be a creative compass in game development. The session will show how game makers can balance creativity with actionable insights, ensuring their projects stand out while staying aligned with player expectations.
Speakers & Backgrounds
Sefercan Apaydın / Datahumble
Sefercan is Head of Product & Operations at Datahumble, overseeing how the platform provides live metrics and sentiment insights for PC games. His focus is on bridging the gap between creative decision-making and performance indicators like wishlists, streaming traction, and player reviews.
İlkan Atalar / Room Games
İlkan Atalar, Co-Founder & CEO of Room Games, brings the perspective of a developer actively building PC titles while also shaping Datahumble. His experience shows how data tools can empower indie teams to take creative risks while reducing uncertainty in marketing and publishing.
Robert Huỳnh / Reforged Labs
Robert Huỳnh is Co-Founder & CEO of Reforged Labs, a Y Combinator-backed company focused on data and AI for user acquisition and ad creatives. Their platform “Boa” helps game studios test and refine ads with AI-driven insights, offering practical strategies on how to align data with marketing.
Why This Panel Matters
Indie developers often ask: how do I know my game is ready, and how do I make sure people see it? This panel addresses that question. Attendees will learn how to:
- Apply practical metrics from pre-launch through live ops, from marketing to community growth.
- Use data tools like Datahumble to track Steam traction, community sentiment, and wishlist momentum.
- Balance data vs creativity so decisions support originality rather than restrict it.
Hero Concept
Hero Concept is an Istanbul-based indie game studio founded in 2017 by Serkan Özay and Turgut Hakkı Özdemir. The studio specializes in reimagining classic arcade and beat ’em up genres, combining nostalgic art styles with modern narrative and gameplay innovations. Known for titles like Mayhem Brawler and Doughlings, Hero Concept has earned attention both in Turkiye and globally for its polished visuals, strong art direction, and clear creative vision.
Solo Session: Framing an Indie Game
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Serkan Özay will present “Framing an Indie Game”, exploring how indie developers can define their game’s identity from early stages — covering concept, visual style, narrative tone, mechanics, and market positioning. The talk will guide listeners through how strong framing can help a game stand out, attract the right audience, and align creative decisions throughout development and marketing.
Özay is Co-Founder & Creative Director at Hero Concept, with over 13 years of experience in the video game industry. Before founding Hero Concept, he worked in art and design roles at several companies, including Peak Games, and has built a reputation for strong visual direction, character design, and storytelling in game worlds. Under his leadership, Hero Concept has released Doughlings: Arcade, Doughlings: Invasion, Mayhem Brawler, and is currently working toward Mayhem Brawler II: Best of Both Worlds.
Why This Talk Matters
For indie developers, framing your game early isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about coherence, identity, and how you communicate your vision to players and publishers. In “Framing an Indie Game”, attendees will learn:
This session explores the journey of shaping an indie game from its first spark to its final identity. We’ll look at the common roadblocks in ideation, development, and publishing—and discuss practical strategies to avoid or overcome them.
Serkan Özay, Co-Founder & Creative Director at Hero Concept
Core Engage & Keep Games
Core Engage is an Istanbul-based studio best known for New Cycle, a survival strategy game that blends city-building and resource management in a post-apocalyptic setting. The title, currently in Early Access, earned recognition as PC Game of the Year at Kristal Piksel 2024, highlighting the studio’s ambition and craftsmanship.
Keep Games, on the other hand, is a Turkiye-based PC game studio working on innovative projects while also fostering strong ties with content creators and communities. Their approach bridges game development with audience engagement, reflecting the evolving relationship between studios and players in today’s market.
Fireside Chat: Ask the Dev: A Game Development Journey
In this session at the Mobidictum Conference 2025, Alp Geven (Core Engage) and Efe Uygaç (Keep Games) will share their personal development journeys, from the idea stage to building teams & early access, dealing with feedback, marketing & community building, as well as learning from failures and pivots.
Why This Talk Matters
- For indie developers, this is a chance to see two distinct but complementary paths: one from inside dev work (making, producing), the other from outside in (audience, content, influence).
- You’ll get real lessons on early access, handling feedback & reviews, managing community expectations, and how marketing or visibility plays a role before & after launch.
- Especially useful in 2025 when discoverability & community loyalty are as important as core gameplay: learning to build both is critical.
ELYZIO – Hero Concept – Recontact Games – Ubik Studios
These four studios are driving the resurgence of narrative-rich experiences in the PC/console scene. As previously mentioned, Hero Concept has built a reputation for visually strong, story-inflected beat ’em ups and arcade hybrids, with Mayhem Brawler and Doughlings series.
Ubik Studios, founded in 2022, balances visual identity, puzzle mechanics, and hand-animated narrative in titles like Havsala: Into the Soul Palace and Leila, which released in April 2025 on PC and consoles.
ELYZIO is a newer studio co-founded by industry veterans from Google and Ubisoft; their work includes Warden’s Will, a multiplayer shooter, and collaborations on narrative adventure games like Pera Coda. The studio also acts as a publisher for bold storytelling projects.
Recontact Games blends game design with strong cinematic & academic roots. Their recent title, Nazar (2024), is an FMV-platformer with a deeply rooted narrative atmosphere (set in Cappadocia). Eray Dinç’s role in both education and design adds to the studio’s thoughtful approach.
Panel: Narrative-Driven PC Games – The Resurgence of Storytelling
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, this session gathers four creative leads to explore why PC is re-embracing deep narrative. They’ll discuss how storytelling (plot, character, immersive worlds, choice, visual narrative) is shaping player expectations again, how smaller studios can tell stories without huge budgets, and how narrative design intersects with art, mechanics, and marketing to affect both creative satisfaction and commercial success.
Why This Session Matters
- Narrative games are seeing renewed interest in the PC space — players are seeking emotional, immersive experiences, not just gameplay mechanics. This panel gives insights into what that demand means for game design.
- For indie developers, it’s inspiring to see what can be done with moderate budgets: strong visuals, tight narrative integration, and clever design can win attention.
- It will cover how to balance narrative and gameplay mechanics, how story influences marketing (trailers, community expectations), and how to avoid common pitfalls (overpromise, lack of polish in narrative parts).
- Also useful for anyone in narrative design, visual direction, writing, or even sound/music: how all these elements combine to create the “feel” of narrative in a game, and how that contributes not just to artistry but to player retention and critical reception.
Prism Studio
Prism Studio is a development studio with a strong reputation for technical excellence and ambitious multiplayer projects. The studio emphasizes cutting-edge animation systems, modular gameplay frameworks, and scalable technical architecture. Based in Austria, Prism combines deep engineering expertise with creative design to build immersive, polished games.
Solo Session: Choosing the Right Team & Scaling Your Studio
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, CTO & Game Development Director Sezer Ömrüm Çetin will lead this talk to share how studios can build their teams and infrastructure to support growth without losing quality. Topics include technical strategy, production workflows, team structuring, and maintaining high standards while scaling.
Sezer has over 9 years of experience in the game industry, currently serving as CTO & Game Development Director at Prism Studio. He leads technical strategy and game production. His specialties include multiplayer architecture, lag compensation (GAS-based), modular gameplay frameworks, and advanced animation systems (IK, Control Rig, Animation Blueprints, root motion workflows). He also directed the development of Heptic Arena, Prism’s recent flagship project, a fast-paced PvPvE shooter with strong technical demands.
Why This Talk Matters
- Learn how to put an “about to fail” project back on track, including how to diagnose issues early and apply corrective strategies.
- Understand how to create and align teams so that every member works toward shared company and project goals.
- Practical tips and tricks for keeping motivation high across departments, avoiding burnout, and sustaining momentum during long production cycles.
- Clarify the difference between a leader and a manager, and why both roles matter in game development.
- Gain insights into managing a AA-sized budget effectively, combining data-driven decision making with healthy team dynamics to maximize efficiency.
Coreloop Partners
Coreloop Partners is a studio/agency focused on high-level art direction and concept art, helping games (and other media) with immersive visuals and strong creative identity. They specialize in bridging cinematic and game art, ensuring that visuals support gameplay, branding, and player expectations.
Solo Session: Redefining Game Art in the New Era
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Onur Can Çaylı (Art Director / Partner at Coreloop Partners) will explore how game art is evolving today. The session will cover how new tools, styles, audience expectations, and production constraints are influencing what game art looks like—and what it should aim for.
Onur Can Caylı is a concept artist and art director with an MFA in Visual Effects and Animation from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He began his career at studios like Sony Pictures and DreamWorks, and has contributed to productions for Marvel, HBO, Netflix, Sega, and more.
His design work includes credits on titles such as Game of Thrones, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, Terminator Genisys, Men in Black 3, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Sonic.
Why This Talk Matters
- Game art isn’t just about making things look pretty; it shapes first impressions, player immersion, and how your game communicates its identity. This talk helps developers/art teams understand how to push art in directions that resonate.
- With more indie studios, faster production cycles, and tools that let more people make high-quality visuals, maintaining coherence, style, and quality is challenging but increasingly possible. Onur’s insights can help with how to set up art pipelines that scale without losing identity.
23 Studios – Tamatem Games
23 Studios is a Turkish firm known for its localization and quality assurance services. Under Osman Erkol, they’ve become a go‐to partner for games seeking to adapt for Turkish audiences, doing more than just translations, ensuring cultural tone and UX fit for local players.
Tamatem Games, founded in 2013 by Hussam Hammo, is a leading publisher focused on bringing global mobile games into the Arabic-speaking world. Their mission emphasizes deep localization—language, visuals, narrative, UI/UX, and cultural adaptation—to create games that feel native to the MENA region.
Fireside Chat: Local Feel, Global Scale: Inside the New Localization Playbook
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Osman Erkol (23 Studios) and Hussam Hammo (Tamatem Games) will take us behind the scenes of modern localization. They’ll share how studios can maintain cultural authenticity while scaling globally, balancing local taste and global reach, and what new practices are defining successful localization in 2025.
Why This Panel Matters
- Localization is no longer optional but essential for global success—players expect more than literal translations. This panel will show what full localization looks like: cultural relevance, UI/UX, narrative adjustments, voices, visuals.
- You’ll learn how teams can organize localization workflows, manage quality, and maintain cultural fidelity while scaling to multiple regions.
- Especially for indie and mid-size studios, the insights here will help avoid pitfalls (tone-deaf translations, cultural missteps) and gain a stronger connection with local audiences.
- Trends in 2025 (streaming, community voice, regional markets rising rapidly) make smart localization a key differentiator. This talk will help developers see how to build “local feel” without sacrificing global scale.
Rive
Rive is a toolset and runtime platform focused on real-time interactive UI/animation, allowing designers and developers to build animated game interfaces that are both beautiful and efficient. With support for engines like Unity, Unreal, Defold, and custom workflows, Rive bridges the gap between creative design and technical implementation in UI.
Fireside Chat: How to Design and Build Killer Game UI
At Mobidictum Conference 2025, Tod Bouris and David Doherty from Rive will show how to design and build standout game UIs using modern workflows.
Tod Bouris / Rive — Engineering Manager at Rive. Tod works on the real-time interactive animation side of UI, supporting studios in integrating Rive’s runtimes and helping tools and workflows that let designers and developers collaborate more smoothly.
David Doherty / Rive — Strategic Account Executive since May 2024. He helps studios adopt Rive for their UI/graphics workflows, focusing on enabling designers to make functional & animated UI that’s production-ready. Previously held roles at Unity and Autodesk, among others.
Why This Talk Matters
In most game studios, designers create the UI and then hand it off to developers to make it functional. That handoff is often messy, time-consuming, and riddled with redundant work. Developers might struggle to execute the designer’s vision due to their tool or language, or build functional UI with developer tools like HTML or XAML — not design tools.
There is a new, better way to build game UI. With Rive, you design and animate game UI in the Rive Editor, export it to the Rive format, and run your files with the Rive Runtimes in Unity, Unreal, Defold, or your custom game engine.
Rive’s Tod Bouris and Dave Doherty will break down how to build a game menu that’s both functional and powerful, without sacrificing creativity. They’ll also show examples from games using Rive today.
Also attending
These companies will also be present at Mobidictum Conference 2025. While they are not part of the official sessions, you’ll have the opportunity to meet them on the floor and expand your network.
- Elos Games & Arts: Elos Games & Arts is a Turkish indie studio founded in 2023, which started operations in Q2 2024. The team of ~10 developers is building premium single-player PC games set in rich fantasy worlds. Their debut title Sagas of Lumin features dragon-riding mechanics (with manual control over flight), aerial + ground combat, and a narrative that emphasises moral choices and world-building.
- FXFX Studios: FXFX Studios is based in Estonia and works in game & VR/AR production. They’ve built several high-visibility projects, including “Exodus of Souls,” which has caught attention as an AAA-visual project. In recent times, they’ve been especially active in UGC (user-generated content) games, launching licensed content (including collaborations in Türkiye like “Kral Şakir”) onto platforms like Roblox.
- Moonstar Games: Moonstar Games is a game & VR/animation producer based in İstanbul. They develop both VR/AR/interactive experiences and more traditional games: for example, Castle Capture Topkapı (a medieval archery multiplayer game), Despot Zombie, and other VR / simulation titles. Their portfolio shows variety (VR, multiplayer, historical themes), and they focus on immersive/experiential gameplay.
- Noxart Games: Noxart Games is an art-&-tech company operating out of Antalya (and possibly also İstanbul) in Turkiye. They do game development (including Evil Stone Online, an open-world MMORPG), work on anti-cheat systems (their “NoxGuard”), and cross-platform applications. Their vision combines high technical standards (especially regarding fairness and infrastructure) with artistic or creative game worlds.
- HOGO Games: HOGO Teknoloji (HOGO Games) is a Turkiye-based game studio founded in December 2022, operating from the Bilişim Vadisi Gebze campus. Despite being relatively small (team of ~11 members as of April 2025), they develop for mobile and PC. The company recently secured investment at a valuation of USD 5 million from a consortium including Red Axe Games and angel investors. Their PC titles have achieved strong performance on Steam, ranking in top-5% by sales/revenue in their categories.
