ChesedGamesOnlineI’m Chesed Wolfjager, a 23-year-old tech entrepreneur based in Suriname. Since I was young, I was busy with IT. It all started when I Googled “Game Maker”, because I wanted to learn how to build games. I stumbled upon a tool called “Game Maker”, developed by Mark Overmars to build games easily. That’s how my career in game development started.
When I was 16, I enrolled in a course on web design by N.V. SITT. I did not grasp much of the concepts, but I passed my exams easily. The company taught me how you could install WordPress locally on your computer. WordPress is a tool that makes it easy to build websites. That’s the tool I’m using currently for my website. I wanted to apply this knowledge and dreamt about a website where I could show my games to the world. My teacher who taught me then said it was not so difficult. You just had to upload the games and place screenshots. I didn't know how to use WordPress with a hosting provider. Later I learned how to do that.
When I was 17, I started working for a department of a Christian organization. One of my tasks was maintaining and improving the website. This was not a problem for me because I had already worked in WordPress. I’m not working for the non-profit anymore, however it still exists.
When I was 19, I started working for a local IT company. The key tasks were building websites. I started as a project employee. They use WordPress too. When I turned 20, I quit because my contract expired.
When I was 22, I enrolled for a course digital marketing that was held online. My father has given me this advice to make money online. One of the subjects was web development. When I had to choose a subject for my website, I choose game development. I knew a lot about it and was passionate about it. Just like my former teacher said, I uploaded my games and attached screenshots. A lot of people liked my website and I graduated from the course with ease.
The website consists of several subjects. From the homepage, you can navigate to the blog, and game development hub, you can find resources to get started with game development, you could check out the shop, see who are my strategic partners, see the FAQs, subscribe to the newsletter, participate in the online communities and it is possible to chat with the employees.
To give ChesedGamesOnline more exposure, I’m active on social media. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn. There isn’t much on these profiles, because I’m not good with social media. I plan to hire someone for the marketing. I paid a content creator to review my games and promote the site on her Facebook page. And in collaboration with one of my business partners, I plan to hold a presentation. I also want to upload my games to Steam and the Microsoft Store.
The plans with ChesedGamesOnline are huge. Firstly, I want game development integrated into the Surinamese education system. I want to boost the IT sector. Suriname could make money when the game developers are trained well. Game studios could outsource parts of their games to Suriname, just like what is happening with the call centers. I want hackathons and awareness sessions to be organized. And that ChesedGamesOnline is running like an NGO. To put Suriname on the map if we’re talking about game development.
