Nadezhda Danabashevahas always beenvery keen on PC games.She has a degree in tourism but her hobby finally gained an upper hand, and she ended up in the booming business of entertainment software. She is currently general manager of a fully Bulgarian-owned company which develops video games for both the local and global gaming markets. Nadezhda does not simply manage the team that has developed the game Ragewar which has gained popularity among gamers, but takes part in the project as a creative designer.

In the past 15 years she took part in the creation of the first Bulgaria-made game, Bulfleet, and also in the international project Khan Wars. She is the author of one of the most popular games for girls, Ladypopular. She is currently fully occupied with Ragewarand contends that the game is a big challenge for its cross-platform quality. This means the game will be accessible on all mobile devices regardless of whether these are tablets, phones or computers, in a browser under different operating systems. More about the fascinating world of video games and the people who create them - from Nadezhda Danabasheva:

„We have been working on the game for about two years, because the team creating it was willing to make a strategy game enabling players to play small, brief sessions while at the same time keeping the pleasure and excitement of playing. Why strategy?We all love strategy starting with the Age of Empire and the Civilizations: this is our passion. Besides, part of the team had had experience in creating Khan Wars which has been on the market for roughly nine years. It was our breakthrough on the international market. It was and remains very popular. Our knowledge is most of all about strategy. Our goal was to develop a game that appeals to us in the first place, and is entertaining enough. For the time being, response from users suggests we have been successful. A few days ago we presented Ragewar in Poland, its debut on a foreign market, and we hope users there will like it as much as users at home. Ragewar has been developed by a large team recruited from various Bulgarian companies. We have selected the cream of programmers, sound engineers, designers etc. They have all worked with passion and with great respect for our joint project.”

The world is driven by competition, the natural human aspiration to perform better than others. There is no way to show you are better without a competition, This is the role of video games - they should enable people to compete more often and to test their skills in tough, fair battles with virtual enemies. Developers of video games have created an endless gaming field where competition thrives. They seek to surprise fussy users with more interesting and sophisticated products. The battles are no longer the main focus of games: they provide the background of players' actions. „We increasingly stake on that players form a community in which they build up a strategy and should assist each other to attain their goals”, explains Nadezhda Danabasheva.

„I am not the type of gamer skilled in shooting games that require quick reaction. In fact, I perform rather poorly in them. Instead strategy games are my cup of tea, as in them one has to think twice and predict the future moves in the game. I also love mystery games when you have to think out of the box and look at the game's scheme in a different way. To this day my favorite games are The Neverhood and Syberia, and to me they are more a challenge to the brain than to reflexes and swift reactions. Despite the tight schedule I give some time to gaming. I am a great fan of the action role-playing game Diablo. I have spent long hours in this game and I still get into it for half an hour to meet friends there and have a fight or two.”

English Daniela Konstantinova