Hamishegi
Dota 2 team manager
I ran the team: finding and entering tournaments, organising practice, and everything else a competitive roster needs to keep playing.
OmidAlipour
A gaming company.
A German course.
I didn’t know they belonged to the same story.
ExploreMove the seam.
For years, they looked unrelated.
Thread A
Software, games, worlds.
- Software engineering2015
- MOBAGYM2018
- WOG — World of Gamers2020
- Hamishegi · ZinoGame2022
- Persistent worlds2019 →
Thread B
Language, learning, design.
- German translation2020
- Educational design2021 →
- Deutsch im IranFinal term
- The dictionary question→ 2026
Chapter 01 · Thread AJun 2018 — May 2019
MOBAGYM
I joined MOBAGYM, a social network for gamers, as a designer.
Then I started working on the product. Then the mobile application. Then development. Eventually, I was leading part of the team building it.
It was one of the first places where design, software and gaming stopped feeling like separate disciplines.
Product designMobile appSoftware developmentTeam leadership
Scan MOBAGYM poster · 2018 · Designed by Omid AlipourShown as it survived.
Chapter 02 · Thread AFeb 2020 — Sep 2020
Gaming isa job.
WOG · World of Gamers — slogan, 2020
After leaving MOBAGYM, I spent seven months writing the proposal, finding an investor and preparing a company of my own.
In 2020 it became WOG — World of Gamers. The goal was larger than an esports team: an ecosystem for Iranian players — teams, tournaments, content, community, a game house, and a path toward playing professionally.
- Role
- Founder & CEO
- Built
- Pro teams, tournaments, a game house, website & tournament platform
- Titles
- League of Legends · Dota 2 · Clash Royale
- People
- 30+ over its lifetime
- Users
- 5,000+ in about six months Founder-reported
- Ended
- September 2020 — I left for personal reasons
Most of the product did not survive. The thinking did.
Scan Appointment · 1399/04/01 (21 Jun 2020) · No. 99/131
Secretary of the Esports Competitions Committee — Tehran Province
دبیر کمیته مسابقات ورزشهای الکترونیک استان تهران
Appointed by Mostafa Mohammadi, head of the Tehran Province Electronic Sports Committee. The title above is a direct translation of the letter — nothing more.
Chapter 03 · Thread B2020 — 2026
Then I left gaming behind, and studied German.
At the time, the decision had nothing to do with building an education company.
Part of my family lived in Germany. I was interested in art and literature. And I thought I might eventually leave Iran.
I didn’t.
- Programme
- German Translation (B.A.)
- Where
- Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran — Sadrzadeh Faculty
- Years
- 2020 — 2026
- GPA
- 16.97 / 20
Chapter 04 · Thread A2022
Back in the game. Twice, in parallel.
Zino Network → ZinoGame
Invited as CEO to launch its gaming arm
Zino Network worked with YouTube creators on their foreign-currency revenue, and covered the Iranian Pro League on YouTube. It wanted a gaming division, and asked me to build it: tournaments, content, proposals and fundraising.
After about three months I concluded the direction was unlikely to work, and left.
Chapter 05 · Alongside everything2018 — 2025
I wasn’t only running things. I was designing them.
Posters, identities, reports and infographics — for my own companies and for clients. Design was never a separate job. It was how I thought through a problem.
Scan Gamma · Esports industry report · 13 pages · PersianDesigned by Omid Alipour
Project · 2024
Calidit — design for an exhibition in Dubai
Project-based design work for Calidit, a high-temperature insulation company, for their exhibition in Dubai.
Chapter 06 · Both threads2021 — 2025
The quiet years.
WOG had ended. What continued were two threads — one of them lived inside a game world.
Thread A · Persistent worlds
- You enter.
- You grow.
- You meet people.
- You cooperate.
- You compete.
- You return.
- Your history remains.
I was spending years inside World of Warcraft. It felt different from ordinary software. You didn’t open it, complete a task and leave. You returned to a world where your progress, relationships, identity and history remained. I built a small community and made content around it.
That idea stayed with me.
Thread B · Learning
- University.
- Grammar.
- Translation.
- Dialogue.
- Culture.
- Exercises.
- A book of my own.
On the other side: university, German, and a growing habit of treating a lesson as something designed — sequence, feedback, play.
Chapter 07 · Thread BFinal university project
Deutsch im Iran
For my final university project, I designed a German-learning system around something familiar: Iran.
Grammar, dialogue, culture, exercises and visual games shared the same pages. A trip to Shiraz taught the Präteritum. Tehran and Berlin taught the verb wollen. A board game ran from the Brandenburg Gate to the Azadi Tower.
It was still a book. But I had already started treating learning as an experience that could be designed.
Educational designCultural localisationGamificationVisual systems
Selected pages only. The complete book is not reproduced here.
Scan Workshop · 17 Dec 2025 · Sadrzadeh Faculty
Workshops on design, technology and AI — and private programming lessons.
The first edition of a Photoshop workshop: how to think in the language of the tool, file and layer discipline, the role of design in higher education — and a review of how Deutsch im Iran was designed.
Chapter 08 · The connectorBefore Vakav
At university, we were often told to use dictionaries instead of AI, because dictionaries offered deeper linguistic information.
The argument made sense.The conclusion didn’t.
During a stretch of internet disruptions and routine, I began digitising dictionary content so it would be searchable and easy to carry. Then the question changed: why digitise the dictionary at all?
Why couldn’t AI provide the same depth — context, usage, grammar, examples, relationships — and then go further?
- 01Dictionary
- 02AI
- 03Language learning
- 04Educational intelligence
- 05Gamification
- 06Ecosystem
- 07Vakav
One taught me how people inhabit systems. The other, how people learn inside them. AI made the connection visible.
It wasn’t a plan.It’s a pattern.
Chapter 09 · NowSince early 2026 · Render
Vakav began with a simple question: why should AI give language learners faster answers when it could help them build deeper understanding?
What started as an alternative to the dictionary became a larger system for translation, analysis, practice, conversation, review, competition and progression.
Vakav is the current result. The world behind it is still being built.
Most tools
Fast answer
Vakav
Deep understanding
Current product, Persian interface. Screens shown as they are.
Study partner
Vaki
The owl who learns with you.
Vaki is a character system, not a mascot sticker: dozens of variations — students, grandparents, rivals, collectors — that carry the product’s tone from the study session to the competition arena.
The learning loop
- 01Search
- 02Translation
- 03Understanding
- 04Analysis
- 05Example
- 06Practice
- 07Conversation
- 08Mistake
- 09Learning
- 10Review
- 11Competition
- 12Reward
- 13Progress
- Learn
- Words, sentences, translation, linguistic analysis, examples, usage, collocations, Word Profiles
- Practise
- Exercises, review, educational memory, AI chat, voice, simulated situations
- Play
- Friends, competition, Vakavard, leagues, achievements, rewards, collections
- Platform
- Web / PWA, Android, administrative systems
Language architecture
- EnglishPrimary
- GermanIn progress
- ArmenianIn progress
- FrenchIn progress
- ChineseIn progress
- KoreanIn progress
- SpanishIn progress
- RussianPlanned
- ItalianPlanned
- JapanesePlanned
- ArabicPlanned
Chapter 10 · NextDrawing Thesis — not a product
From pages and applications to persistent worlds.
My long-term thesis is that education will increasingly move from pages and applications toward persistent digital worlds.
Vakav is my attempt to explore what that transition could look like for language learning.
Volume I is written: a 526-page proposal told as a novel — the product, the pedagogy and the world, argued through story.
- Vol. IVakavWritten · 526 pp.
- Vol. IINative AIConcept
- Vol. IIIThe World of VakavConcept
2020 · WOG
“Gaming is a job.”
Questioned the line between play and profession.
2026 · Vakav
Learning can be a world.
Questions the line between education and world.
An observed pattern — not a claim of destiny.
How I work
What the pattern says.
Product, design, engineering, education, AI and business — usually at the same time.
- 01
Systems, not features.
I keep turning single activities into ecosystems — gaming into a platform, a lesson into a loop.
- 02
Bold where it’s reversible.
Visual design, UI, prototypes and concepts: I experiment aggressively.
- 03
Careful where it isn’t.
Production, user data, auth, migrations, money: incremental, audited, one source of truth.
- 04
Build. Inspect. Rebuild.
When something is structurally wrong, I rebuild it rather than decorate it.
- 05
AI amplifies judgement.
It speeds up execution. It doesn’t replace deciding what is right.
Short version
In one page.
Omid Alipour is an Iranian product builder and founder working across product design, software, artificial intelligence and education.
His path began in software and gaming, moved through esports entrepreneurship and German-language education, and converged in Vakav — an AI-based language-learning platform exploring how learning can evolve from an application into a persistent digital world.
- 2015Software engineering, Islamic Azad UniversityStudy
- 2017Mellat Insurance — programming internWork
- 2018MOBAGYM — designer to development team leadWork
- 2020WOG (World of Gamers) — founder & CEOFounded
- 2020Gamma — esports tournaments, industry infographicsWork
- 2020Secretary, Esports Competitions Committee — Tehran ProvinceAppointed
- 2020German translation, Islamic Azad University — GPA 16.97/20Study
- 2022Hamishegi — Dota 2 team managerWork
- 2022ZinoGame (Zino Network) — CEO, launching the gaming armWork
- 2024Calidit — design for an exhibition in DubaiProject
- 2025Deutsch im Iran; Photoshop workshopEducation
- 2026Vakav — AI language-learning platformFounded
The next part isn’t written yet.
If you’re building something around AI, education, digital worlds — or the future of Vakav — let’s talk.