CTalk
“Israel has no big-budget games industry. The goal is to resemble Poland and France.”
Industry leaders say Israel’s gaming sector lacks AAA production and is betting on education, Unreal Engine, and regional impact to close the gap.
Tali Freeman Shalev and Luc Bernard at Tech TLV.
(Streame)
“In Israel, the AAA games industry effectively does not exist. Israel is very advanced in high tech, in behind-the-scenes technologies, but in technologies that shape culture, such as video games, we have fallen behind. Our goal is for Israel to be more like Poland and France in this field,” said game director and head of Epic Academy in Israel Luc Bernard, describing the gap between the startup nation and the world of narrative gaming, which in Israel is largely focused on gambling and mobile.
In a joint interview with Tali Freeman Shalev, CEO of CreaTech-Labs, the two presented the initiative to establish an academy based on the Unreal Engine. The engine enables the creation of worlds without prior knowledge of coding or mathematics.
Freeman Shilav noted that the activity will begin in southern Israel, with the aim of generating social impact and providing expressive tools for teenagers coping with ongoing trauma. The initiative is working to build a business ecosystem in cooperation with companies such as Microsoft and Intel, based on the understanding that interactive media is the future labor market.
You can watch the full conversation in the video above.
