GameDev Women Cyprus

💎 A special guest in today’s Women Spotlight: Game Industry Voices & Stories

Meet Alisa Chumachenko, one of the panelists at the upcoming GameDev Women Cyprus Annual Conference on October 9.

Alisa Chumachenko, Game Industry Veteran, Chief Strategy Officer 4dev.com

I’ve been in games and tech for more than 20 years. I built and led companies including Game Insight and GOSU.ai, scaled international teams, raised capital, went through acquisitions and exits — and through projects that didn’t work out the way I expected.
Over time, I realized that the common thread wasn’t games, AI, or even entrepreneurship.

What I really love is building and transforming companies: figuring out strategy, assembling strong teams, rebuilding organizations and solving problems where there is no obvious playbook.

▫️Success, Failure and Starting Again
A long career gives you both sides of the story. I’ve built companies that grew incredibly fast and had successful exits. I’ve also lost a business, a team and a big part of the professional identity I had spent years building.
It taught me that a career isn’t a ladder. Sometimes you build a company. Sometimes you rebuild it. And sometimes the thing that needs rebuilding is you.

▫️Which game character best describes you on your career journey?
I’ll cheat: I’m not a character. I’m the person playing Civilization.
Give me a map, limited resources, an ambitious objective and a slightly unreasonable number of problems to solve — and I’m happy.
I build, expand, negotiate, discover that some of my assumptions were completely wrong, change the strategy and keep playing.
Actually, that sounds suspiciously close to my career.

▫️What is your superpower?
Building and transforming companies.
I’m at my best when the problem is complicated and there isn’t an obvious answer. I look at the whole system — strategy, people, product, revenue, structure — figure out what is preventing it from moving forward, and start rebuilding it.
After 20+ years, this is still the kind of work I love most.

Found something in the story that resonates? Connect with Alisa: @lynnalisa | Linkedin

💬 Want to continue the conversation? Join our chats and meet Alisa there: ru chat and eng chat.

Hi wonderful Community! 🩵
Starting today, we'll be sharing industry reports, market research, and deep dives that are actually relevant to us in the gamedev industry.

So we're kicking things off with this one:

📊 GAMES INDUSTRY 2026: CYPRUS AND ISRAEL
An exclusive report from GamesBeat, sponsored by Xsolla

A Mediterranean corridor of gaming influence and innovation: two small countries, two major sources of impact. Cyprus and Israel at the center of the games industry.

✔️ Download the full report and discover how the balance of power in global gamedev is shifting and what opportunities this opens for your business.

Would love to hear if you want more of this kind of content, or specific topics/regions you're curious about? This is your community, so tell us what's useful! 💬

🎙️ For the first time, we’re revealing the two voices at the heart of our fireside debate “Are Video Games Part of Modern Art?”

The second GameDev Women Cyprus Annual Conference brings together two very different professional worlds and one question that gets more interesting the closer you look at it.

🎮 Maria Amirkhanyan, Lead Strategic Producer at Rustling Leaves Games, brings 13+ years of experience across PC, console, and mobile games. Her background spans player research, product and business strategy, and growth, helping studios understand who their game is really for, what makes it stand out, and how creative ambition can connect with player expectations.

🎨 Iryna Sigkitova comes from the world of contemporary art and visual culture. She is a Creative Researcher, Art Curator and Artist with a Master’s degree in Art History and Culture. Her work explores visual language, symbols, cultural references, and the shifting boundaries between art, mass culture, and new media. Iryna also works to make contemporary art less distant, turning complex ideas into accessible and provocative conversations.

Contemporary art has become immersive, interactive, and participatory. Games create worlds we don’t just watch. We enter them, explore them, shape them.
And this is exactly where the two perspectives meet. So where does one end and the other begin?

Maria and Iryna will meet at that intersection and look for the answer together. No simple definition, and no predetermined conclusion.

Just two strong perspectives, one big question, and a room full of people invited to think it through together.

✔️ Join us on October 9.
Program & Registration

⚡️Hi Wonderful Community! We have great news from WN!

WN Conference Cyprus’26 is taking place in Limassol on September 17–18.

It will bring together game developers, publishers, investors, platforms, and service providers for two days of talks, roundtables, the Developer Showcase, and plenty of networking.

✔️ Members of our community can get 10% off tickets with promo code WOMEN10:
https://wnhub.io/event-info/cyprus26

✔️✔️ And one more thing: we don’t want the ticket price to stop someone from attending. If you’re currently looking for a job, or your company is unable to cover your ticket but you would genuinely like to join, please message Julia Lebedeva @Julia_Lebedeva privately.

Complimentary tickets are available for women from our community in these situations.

Hope to see many of you next week!

💎 Women Spotlight: Game Industry Voices & Stories

Julia Riabovol, HR & Talent Consulting at CYGMA

▫️Where People, Business & Community Meet
I realized quite early that I wanted to work with people, so I built my career in HR. My last role before moving into gamedev was as an HR Director in a pharmaceutical company.

Then I joined the game industry and spent several years working across recruitment, teams, and business. Later, I built a recruiting agency, explored business development, and in a VP role worked on partnerships and co-development.
At the same time, I became increasingly involved in the gamedev community in Cyprus, including through GDCy.

Today, my focus is HR & Talent Consulting, and I support CYGMA in developing its HR and recruitment direction.

I’m most interested in what happens at the intersection of people, business, and community: building connections, bringing people together, and helping ideas turn into real projects.

What I love most about gamedev is the people. It’s full of bright, passionate, slightly crazy people who genuinely love what they create.

▫️If your career were a game genre, what would it be and why?
Open-world RPG. I’ve never been very good at following a predefined path. I prefer to explore, learn new skills, meet interesting people, and see where the next opportunity leads. Apparently, I have a habit of picking up side quests that eventually become part of the main storyline.

▫️Beyond your work and roles, who are you?
Beyond my work and roles, I’m someone who loves making life feel beautiful and memorable. I love cooking, reading, traveling, and sharing a bright, full life with my husband Andrey and our cat.

I’m always noticing beautiful things and finding ways to bring them into everyday life. Sometimes it’s a dish, sometimes a photo, a gift, an outfit, or an interior. I think I simply enjoy creating little moments that make life feel more special.

✔️ Found something in the story that resonates? Connect with Julia: @JuliaEevee | Linkedin.

💬 Want to continue the conversation? Join our chats and meet Julia there: ru chat and eng chat.

🎆 9.10 GameDev Women Cyprus Annual Conference
Are Video Games Part of Modern Art?

Why this topic?

Contemporary art has long outgrown the canvas and the hushed museum hall.

Installations you have to walk around. Performances where the viewer becomes a participant. Projects that shift depending on how someone moves through them. Immersion, interactivity, a sense of presence — a language contemporary art has been exploring for years now.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Games build worlds we don't just look at, but step into. Explore. Shape.

🔎 Coincidence? Or are contemporary art and games moving in the same direction faster than we realize?

That's exactly what we'll explore at the second GameDev Women Cyprus Annual Conference on October 9. We're bringing together voices from across the games industry to search for an answer together.

Join us on October 9.
✔️ Program & Registration

✨ Community Recap
A lot has been happening in the community lately: new faces, new conversations, new ways to connect, and a very exciting event ahead. Here’s a quick recap of what you might have missed 💜

🎙️ Women Spotlight
Meet our wonderful community members:
• Maria Amirkhanyan, Player Behavior & Product Growth Strategist
• Leksa Fadeeva, Lead Support & Localization Manager, Helio Games
• Jane Artemova, Enterprise Sales at Devtodev, Partnerships at CYGMA
• Katya Dolgova, Co-Founder & COO at Redhill Games, Founder of It Starts With You
• Alena Terekhova, Product Publishing Director, Wargaming
• Daria Rachuk, Business Development Director, Xsolla
• Katya Sabirova, Head of PR at SayGames, Co-Founder of InGame Job

Want to take part in Women Spotlight or nominate someone from the community? Fill the Spotlight form.

🎮 GameDev Women Cyprus Annual Conference
On October 9, we’re bringing the community together for our second annual conference, this year exploring one big question: Are Video Games Part of Modern Art?

Expect inspiring conversations, contemporary art, new connections, and an evening surrounded by women from across the games industry.

Places are limited, so make sure to register and invite your friends and colleagues from the industry to join us too.
✔️ Registration

💬 More ways to connect
We now have separate ENG and RU chats, so you can join the conversation in whichever language feels more natural.

The channel and both chats are also connected in one GameDev Women Cyprus Community Folder, making it easier to keep everything together:
▫️ ENG chat
▫️ RU chat
▫️ How to add the Community Folder

We love seeing this community becoming more active, connected, and shaped by the people in it.

Have an idea, want to contribute, share your expertise, or suggest something we should do next? Message Olga @olliday.

After all, this community is you, and we’re happy to keep building it together 💜

💎 Women Spotlight: Game Industry Voices & Stories

Katya Sabirova, Head of PR at SayGames, Co-founder at InGame Job

I joined the games industry in 2018, straight out of maternity leave — a very conscious choice. My husband was already working in games, and I could see the kind of people around him: passionate, curious, deeply invested. I wanted to work with people like that too.

I started as a producer of online educational courses for games industry professionals. Then I worked on career media, joined InGame Job to help build a job platform and make hiring in the industry more transparent and ethical, and worked in PR at Values Value. For the past year, I've also been leading communications at SayGames, one of the world's largest mobile game publishers.

The roles changed, but the reason I stayed never did — I genuinely love the people who make games. Eight years later, I still think there is something special about this community.

A lot of what matters to me professionally comes down to the same things: respect, ethics and human relationships. I like to start from the assumption that the people I work with — colleagues, partners, journalists, developers — are great professionals with good intentions. It makes for better relationships, but I also think it makes for better work.

▫️ Career and Family, Not Career or Family
I've never wanted to choose between career and family. I've been a working mother of two throughout this journey — through Covid, relocation, and rebuilding our life from scratch without grandparents nearby. So I really value being part of teams and communities that see me not only as a professional, but as a whole person — including being a mother. Juggling all these roles doesn't make me less focused on my career. If anything, it makes me feel more alive and more like myself.

▫️ Which game character best describes you on your career journey?
I'll cheat: it's the entire cast of The Sims 2. My adult life feels like an advanced version of that childhood game — keeping every bar from dropping too low: career, creativity, relationships, family, energy. I'm a generalist who moves between strategy, writing, and hands-on problem-solving, keeping everything in balance. Add raising two kids abroad while their dad also works full-time, and the Sims analogy becomes almost painfully accurate.

It's actually quite nice to discover that I never really stopped playing The Sims. The graphics just got much better.

▫️ What is your superpower?
Communication — in the broadest sense. A conversation, an article, a pitch, or turning chaotic information into a clear narrative — these are all forms of the same thing.

Communication isn't only about delivering a message; it's about relationships. Studying psychology alongside my games career showed me the overlap: both require listening, finding meaning, building connections. I realized this during a serious professional identity crisis, which is why it means so much now.

If I get to choose a superpower, I hope it's this: making things clearer and helping people understand each other a little better.

✔️ Found something in the story that resonates? Connect with Katya: @katya_sabirova | Linkedin.

💬 Want to continue the conversation? Join our chats and meet Katya there: ru chat and eng chat.

Anyone at gamescom? 👀🎮
Cologne's full of familiar faces this week, maybe you'll spot your industry bestie along the way.

If you're there, come share your insights and photos in the chat!

We'll also be running a quick poll there, so join in
👉 ENG Chat
👉 RU Chat

While you're there, swing by the Xsolla Clubhouse any day from 9 to 6 — grab a coffee, a bite, and meet friends from the industry.
📍 Google Maps

💡 GameDev Women Cyprus Community Folder!

We've brought our whole ecosystem together: the channel, plus separate ENG and RU chats for easier and more natural communication, all in one place. It's now even easier to stay connected, share, and grow with the Community.

✔️ How to add it:
▫️ Open the GameDev Women Cyprus channel
▫️ Tap the channel name at the top
You'll see all linked chats.
▫️ Toggle "Show as One Chat" to group them into a single item in your chat list
That's it! Channel + chats, all together.

Know someone in the industry who'd love this? Invite your friends and colleagues to join us. See you there 👋

🎆 Hi wonderful Community! We have fantastic news:

GameDev Women Cyprus is back for its second Annual Conference on October 9!

Join us to celebrate the women shaping the future of the video games industry while creating opportunities for visibility, collaboration and growth.

This year's edition explores one bold question: Are Video Games Part of Modern Art? 🎮

Where does the video game industry transform into pure art? Have virtual worlds become a new form of artistic expression? We don't offer ready-made answers — we're creating a space to shape that answer together, inside one of Cyprus's most unique contemporary art venues.

What to expect:
▫️Fireside Debate where game development meets contemporary art
▫️Interactive Panel with women shaping every corner of the games industry
▫️Immersive Experience with art, music, curated activities and unforgettable moments
▫️Community & Connections with remarkable women

🎙️Interested in speaking? Apply to become a panelist when registering.

🗓️ October 9, 16:30 – 22:00
📍 Mikri Salamina Art Space, Limassol, Cyprus

We are welcoming women of all roles and backgrounds in the gamedev industry.

Free entry — registration required, spots are limited.

▫️Check the full programm and register▫️

✨ Hi wonderful Community! Let's wrap up our mini-series on burnout with a roundup of mental health apps. Share your favorite tools in the chat, let's build a community knowledge base together.

▫️Breathing and quick stress relief
• Calm — known for Sleep Stories, soundscapes, meditations, and breathing exercises. Also has mood check-ins that link your entries to sleep and triggers and suggest a matching practice.

• Headspace — structured, beginner-friendly meditation courses with short "SOS" sessions for acute stress. Includes an AI companion for reflective conversations.

• Prosto — a Russian-language meditation and sleep app with courses on stress, life transitions, and habit-building.

▫️Working with your thinking
• MindShift CBT — a free app for anxiety and stress, built on the CBT technique of "catch the thought and challenge it."

• Wysa — an AI companion you can talk through your feelings with. Breaks emotions down into parts and offers CBT-based exercises; useful for those who want to talk it out rather than just log a mood.

▫️Emotion and mood journaling
• Daylio — a text-free micro-journal: log your mood and the day's activities in a couple of taps, and over time see charts of what actually affects how you feel. Minimal effort, great for building a habit.

• Reflectly — an AI journal that turns daily entries into structured reflection, with prompts to help track emotional patterns.

• Moodnotes — combines mood tracking with CBT-style prompts, helping you notice recurring patterns in both thoughts and mood.

• Balance Journal — a journal, mood tracker, and habit/goal tracker with AI-generated insights on your entries.

▫️Community
• Insight Timer — a free app with a huge meditation library, mood journal, and large community; also lists in-person retreats. A good fit for building a support circle through practice.

▫️Early detection and recovery tracking
• Anticipate — instead of measuring stress levels, tracks recovery specifically: whether sleep is normalizing, whether activity is returning to normal. Better suited to people already coming out of burnout than to early prevention.

▫️Gamifying self-care
• Finch — turns daily self-care check-ins into caring for a virtual pet. Good for anyone who finds regular trackers and journals too clinical.

All of these apps can help you track your state and relieve stress, but they don't replace professional support. If stress develops into persistent low mood, a sense of hopelessness, or a loss of interest in things you used to enjoy, reach out to loved ones or a specialist.

Take care of yourself 🫶

✨ Hi wonderful Community! We're continuing our series about personal growth and mental health.

Last time we talked about balancing career and life, and burnout is really the other side of that coin.

Burnout develops in three directions: Exhaustion, feeling empty inside, emotions going numb, snapping more easily. Detachment, cynicism and distance creeping in toward people, where genuine engagement used to be. Self-devaluation, a growing sense of "I'm not handling this," even when that's objectively untrue.

If that's you right now, it's not a personal failing, and you don't have to push through alone.

Quick relief, a couple of minutes
▫️Straw breathing. Exhale slowly, as if through a thin straw, with a light hiss, five to six times longer than the inhale. A few cycles and your nervous system gets the message: it's safe now.

▫️Progressive relaxation. Tense each muscle group hard, then release suddenly: hands, shoulders, face, jaw, neck, back, feet. Your body learns the contrast and relaxes on command.

▫️Resource-state anchor. Recall a moment you felt truly good, where you were, what was around you, what your body felt. Stay there a minute. Return to it whenever you need to steady yourself fast.

What helps in the long run
▫️My resources. Write down what energizes you, what makes you feel good, who supports you, and what you're proud of. Reread it when things feel overwhelming.

▫️Circle of support. List names: someone you lean on, someone who tells you the truth, someone who helps practically, someone who simply accepts you. Empty columns point to relationships worth building.

▫️Emotion journal. For a couple of weeks, note what you feel and when. What we don't notice in ourselves still runs the show.

Shifting the thoughts that wear you down
The same situation can drain you completely or pass calmly, depending on the thought you attach to it. Take a recurring situation, describe it concretely, catch the thought behind the emotion ("they don't value me," "I can't cope"), and find another interpretation, just as plausible, that doesn't hit as hard. Reach for it next time.

And sometimes it helps to remind yourself: you have the right to say no, to ask for what you want, to make mistakes, and to hold your own opinion.

⚡️When it's time to see a specialist
If a low mood lasts more than two weeks, if you've lost interest in things you used to enjoy, if sleep or appetite stay disrupted, if it feels like "this is just how it'll always be," or if you have thoughts of not wanting to live, see a doctor or therapist, without waiting.

Self-care is a skill, so don't stay alone with it. Support from loved ones and honest conversation with people who understand often matter more than any technique. Take care of yourself, you're your own greatest asset.

The fact that you care enough to notice, in yourself or someone else, is already the first step. And whatever stage you're at, this community has your back 🫶🏻

⚡️Hi wonderful Community! We are happy to share news from our partners:

Women in Tech Cyprus invites you for a special cross-chapter meetup on August 16.

In the spirit of a super-hot August, expect a relaxed, informal evening filled with friendly and inspiring conversations with tons of networking.

✔️ Dinara Kozhamzharova and Zhanar Omirbekova from Satbayev University will share insights from Kazakhstan’s rapidly evolving tech ecosystem and the International Conference on Mobile Systems and Pervasive Computing (MobiSPC) they are attending in Athens.

✔️ They will be joined by special guest Eric T. Matson, Professor at Purdue University and expert in AI, robotics and multi-agent systems.

Expect fresh ideas, meaningful connections and a warm evening with brilliant people, bites, wine, prosecco.

▫️ 16.08, 18:00
▫️ Limassol, Space307
▫️ Registration is required

💎 Women Spotlight: Game Industry Voices & Stories

Daria Rachuk, Business Development Director at Xsolla

▫️From Engineering to Business Development
If someone had asked me at the beginning of my career where I'd end up, I don't think I would have guessed Business Development in GameDev. I have an engineering background and started in technical roles, but even there I found myself most drawn to communication, building relationships, and solving business challenges. Those gradually became my strongest skills and, almost by accident, led me to where I am today.

I joined the games industry early in my career, starting at Nexters. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to work on some truly exciting projects: from launching major IP collaborations, including Lara Croft, to building outsourcing networks from scratch and helping establish strategic partnerships with some of the industry's biggest players. But more importantly, games have been where I've grown both professionally and, in many ways, personally.

What I value most is the community. I've met some of the most open, kind, and genuinely passionate people here. I truly believe that great things happen when talented people who love what they do come together to build something meaningful.

▫️What game mechanic would you bring into real life right now?
It would be the respawn feature. Games teach you that failure isn't game over, it's part of the journey. You don't spend time dwelling on it; you respawn, adapt your strategy, and try again with the experience you've just gained.

▫️Where do you find the energy to keep moving forward?
I find my energy in everyday life: in my values, in the way I choose to live, and in movement itself.

✔️ Found something in the story that resonates? Connect with Daria: @dariarachuk | Linkedin

💬 Want to continue the conversation? Join our chat and meet Daria there.

💎 Women Spotlight: Game Industry Voices & Stories

Alena Terekhova, Product Publishing Director at Wargaming

I'm a Marketing and Publishing Director with a career spanning both automotive and gaming. I started at Mazda, where I built my marketing foundation, before being headhunted by Wargaming — a move I made deliberately, turning down another Marketing Director job offer at a major company to choose global scale and the fun of the game industry instead. Since then, I've led marketing and publishing efforts across F2P titles.

▫️ Focus & Expertise
I work at the intersection of marketing strategy, publishing, and player-facing launches — helping F2P titles find their audience across platforms and turn a launch into a live, thriving community, working closely with global, international teams.

My favorite part of the job is licensing and partnerships: pairing a game with the right brand or IP so both audiences discover something new — think cross-brand collabs, co-marketing campaigns, and audience-sharing promotions that turn a launch into a cultural moment, not just a release date.

Right now, I focus on building repeatable launch scenarios — testing the right working model with a team, then turning it into flow rather than one-off operational effort each time.

▫️ Beyond Work
Outside the office, I am a wife and a mother of an 11-year-old girl. I love meeting new people, traveling, and horse riding.

My inner passion is mentoring and training people who need a push, opening new horizons for them, and watching them level up.

If any of this resonates — whether it’s the mentoring, the courage to choose the unconventional path, or just wanting to grow alongside people who get it, or if that's just a good excuse for brunch — I’d love to connect. Let’s build this community together.

▫️ What game mechanic would you bring into real life right now?
The “save point” / respawn mechanic. Being able to try a bold move, fail safely, learn, and reload — without real-world consequences — would make experimenting with new scenarios (career, relocation, anything) so much less nerve-wracking.

▫️ Beyond your work and roles, who are you?
Someone who treats life a bit like a game she’s actively playing — open to new levels (a new country, a new career chapter, life challenges), willing to experiment with the build, and genuinely energized by figuring out how the next stage works.

✔️ Found something in the story that resonates? Connect with Alena: @a_terekhova1310 | Linkedin
💬 Want to continue the conversation? Join our chat and meet Alena there.

Take the Spotlight or share this form with someone who deserves it.

✨ Hi wonderful Community!

We're starting a new series. Today's topic: how to actually balance a career with the rest of your life.

Because let's be honest — balancing a career you care about with a life you also care about is genuinely hard.

Gallup research (2025) found work-life balance is the number one thing women look for in a job, more than salary. You're not alone in feeling the tension.

Here are 5 things worth trying:

▫️Decide what you won't compromise on — a morning to yourself, dinner with your kid, a workout — and protect it like any other commitment.

▫️Flexible work and always being available are two different things. Worth knowing which one you actually have.

▫️The goal isn't perfection, and it never was. Give yourself permission to do it well enough, not flawlessly.

▫️Say what you need at work and at home. Most things don't shift until someone names them.

▫️Find people who get it. Even one person who understands the juggle makes everything lighter. That's why we're here 🤍

What's one thing that helps you find balance? Share it in our chat, we're collecting the best ones.