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RAMI ISMAIL
My career has been a pretty overwhelming one - in 2010 I started my own games studio, Vlambeer, as a pair of school dropouts. Vlambeer rapidly became a household indie name, and my efforts to promote it accidentally kicked off a public speaking career that continues to this day. My public speaking rapidly got very popular, and then got me traveling the globe. That led to me meeting an uncountable amount of interesting game developers doing incredible work, and industry veterans with inexhaustible industry knowledge.
THOSE ONES WHO MAKE A CHANGE
We live in an extraordinary world. A world in which the means of artistic expression, such as music, art, cinema or television, beyond fulfilling their initial purpose, that of expressing a problem, a discontent, an opinion or a specific feeling in an interesting and imaginative way, have become gigantic industries, in which the desire to generate profits prevails over the quality of the content. More and more we see how the real voices, those that really have something to say, are silenced by those empty voices, which are only in charge of saying just enough to generate as much money as possible
The video game industry, the topic that concerns us at the moment, is no stranger to this situation. It is easily observable how the big video game companies, those that at the time were born to break the wall and create a new way of entertainment, have become soulless shells, dedicated not to express new and refreshing ideas, but to stay in a formulaic scene, a mold in which they remain stuck as long as it generates profits, while those developers with interesting ideas that can work and create a new way of seeing this medium, do not get the visibility they deserve.
Money moves the world, and without it, it is very difficult to generate change.
Despite this depressing panorama, it is well known that from this extraordinary world, extraordinary minds can be born. People capable of making a change, of making a difference. Rami Ismail, co-founder of the indie game studio Vlambeer and renowned industry ambassador, is a great example of such minds.
Rami Ismail became interested in video game development from a very early age, but it wasn't until the creation of his indie studio, Vlambeer, that a turning point was generated in what would become his involvement in this medium. As he himself says, “Vlambeer didn’t just become a game studio, it also became a statement. It was a statement that two kids could start a game studio, that GameMaker was a valid engine, that iOS was a platform you can make premium games on, that indies should be able to make games for console, that you can develop games live on Twitch, that you can take your marketing seriously – then we kind of ran out of things to say.”
Since then, Rami Ismail has consistently fought for those who are underrepresented. He has become an icon in the industry, seeking to make it a more diverse, inclusive and safe place.
He is a globetrotter and an ambassador. He mainly travels around the world, giving talks not only in countries where the video game industry is strong, such as the United States, Europe and Japan, but also in areas where the industry is booming, such as South America, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia. Its mission is to teach local developers how to be more successful in the industry, as well as to give talks on game design and support ideas with great potential.
In addition to this, he has also dedicated himself to developing tools that facilitate the development of video games, making consultations by video call to give advice to those who need it, and writing blogs and notes where he expresses his experiences and seeks to support anyone who wants to get involved in this industry, mainly for those who are not truly represented in this medium.
In an industry where the environment is unfair and stifling, extraordinary people like Rami Ismail are needed to echo those voices that are not being heard. This is why we consider him to belong to "Those Ones Who Make A Change"
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