# Can Portugal Become Europe’s Next Gaming Powerhouse?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499/can-portugal-become-europe-s-next-gaming-powerhouse
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499/can-portugal-become-europe-s-next-gaming-powerhouse.md
Podcast: [Naavik Gaming Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499)
Published: 2026-08-18T12:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e835d508
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/e835d508/f2c6459b.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499/episodes/can-portugal-become-europe-s-next-gaming-powerhouse
Duration seconds: 3696

## Resource

Between 2018 and 2024, the turnover of Portuguese games companies went from around 5 million to nearly 100 million. In this episode, Kalie Moore sits down with Jefferson Valadares, Co-Founder and CEO of partNerd and President of the Portuguese Association of Game Development Companies, to unpack whether a country long known for exporting its best talent can become a home for original IP. Jefferson has seen the industry from nearly every seat, as Studio GM at EA, Executive Producer at BioWare, Head of Mobile at Bandai Namco, and a board member at Rovio before its sale to Sega. They explore what the AAA years taught him about when to spend and when to wing it, why big companies keep funding games they already know won't work, and what he learned running studio acquisitions at Fortis Games about why most deals quietly lose their value. The conversation also goes inside partNerd, the four-person studio he's building now, and why they're making an original co-op game exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2. Jefferson explains the thinking behind designing for asymmetric skill levels so parents, kids, and non-gamers can play together, why GameShare shaped their commercial model, and how hard it is for veteran developers to unlearn best practice and build something genuinely new. He also revisits Doppio, his early bet on voice as a gaming platform, and the timing that led to selling to Fortis in late 2021. Along the way he lays out the Helsinki parallel he sees playing out in Lisbon, why the hardest gap for emerging ecosystems is product rather than engineering or art, and what he thinks the industry is underestimating about the generation that grew up on Roblox and Minecraft rather than GTA. This episode is brought to you by Appcharge, the payments platform built specifically for…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499/episodes/can-portugal-become-europe-s-next-gaming-powerhouse/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/naavik-gaming-podcast-3874499/can-portugal-become-europe-s-next-gaming-powerhouse.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.