Ubisoft’s Fawzi Mesmar Honored with Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards

news.ubisoft.com:

Every year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, developers honor exceptional games from the past year at the Game Developers Choice Awards. Additionally, three awards - Lifetime Achievement, Pioneer Award, and Ambassador Award - are given to specific individuals. This year, Ubisoft's VP of Editorial, Fawzi Mesmar, is the recipient of the Ambassador Award, which honors an individual who has helped the game industry advance to a better place either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for videogames and help further the art.

At Ubisoft, Mesmar works to help developers make their games a reality, but when he's not working his day job, he's often flying around the world to speaking opportunities to which he's been invited as a mentor, teacher, and creative leader. Before joining Ubisoft, Mesmar helped lay the foundation for game development in the Middle East by writing the first-ever book on game design in Arabic.

Ahead of the award ceremony on March 20, we caught up with Mesmar to learn more about what this moment means to him, which accomplishments he's most proud of, and how all developers can make a difference.

What was your reaction to learning the news that you'd been selected for the Ambassador Award?

Fawzi Mesmar: It meant so much to me because I know how this award is selected. Nominations for games are by made by International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), a group of industry game creators, that I am part of as well. Every year, we get a ballot emailed to us, and we make our selection for game of the year and all the other awards, and then there's the recipients of the Lifetime Achievement, Pioneer, and Ambassador awards.