Game Markets in the Middle East:
Opportunities and Challenges
Mahmoud Khasawneh – CEO Quirkat
Oded Sharon – CEO Corbomite Games

Mahmoud Ali Khasawneh
• CEO
• IGDA Middle East Chapter Leader
• 20+ years of industry experience, formerly CIO Government of
Jordan and Director of E-Government Programme
• 6+ years of Middle East games industry experience.

Oded Sharon
• CEO of Corbomite Games
• 12 Years of experience as Game Developer
• Adventure and Action-Adventure games,
Casual and mobile Games, and songs for Rock Band.
• IGDA Chapter coordinator Israel (GameIS)
• Too many hobbies.

Region and Demographics
• Region spans 22 Arab countries and Israel
• One of the fastest growing markets
• Mostly overlooked by game developers and publishers

Mahmoud Ali Khasawneh

The Arabic Speaking Middle East
• Population approaching 400M
• 75M+ internet users
• ~40 million mobile phones sold (3rd quarter 2010)
(source: Gartner)
– 214,886,500 mobile subscriptions
– 200% penetration in richer GCC states
• More than 180M people under the age of 25

Video Game Market Data
• Market size ~$1 billion
(various sources)
• users - 15% of global traffic
(October 2010)
• KSA: 63% of internet users play online games
(source: Arab Advisors Group)

Platforms millions
250
200
150
100
50
0
2006
2010
Percentage
Game titles sold
PS3
PC
PSP
XBOX 360
Wii
NDS
PS2

Piracy
• Estimated by the BSA at 59%
• Same title on PS3 will outsell XBOX360 version at 7:1 ratio
(source: Red Entertainment)
• Online authentication, subscription,
‘always online’ & other DRM solutions
• Pirates vs. Piracy Consumers?

Localization Efforts to Date
• Sony: Wall-E, Start the Party, This is Football
• Asian MMO’s in the Middle East
– Rushed translations
– Bandwidth optimization issues
– Storyline & artistic relevance & acceptability
– RESULT: Short term success
• ‘Partnerships’ for effective market entry

More Localization Efforts
• Arabian Lords - PC
– Strategy/City builder – language intensive
– Collaboration between Quirkat and
US-based Breakaway Games
– Topped regional charts
• Basha – Sony PSP
– First Arab PSP games
– Popular card games

Tackling the Arabic Speaking Market –
Regional Sensibilities
• 50% of internet searches for Islamic content
– Other 50% is for provocative video clips
• online games > pornography, says Google

Tackling the Arabic Speaking Market –
Regional Sensibilities
• Hand of God – Mythic Palace
• Little Big Planet misunderstanding
• Censorship patterns

Tackling the Arabic Speaking Market –
Content Relevance
• Besides suitability, localization for the region heavily depends on relevance
– Thanksgiving, Halloween and other holidays
– Diners
– Music and visual pop culture
– Cinemas and movie tie-ins

Tackling the Arabic Speaking Market –
Technical and Linguistic Considerations
• Unicode / UTF8
• UI space allocation for translated assets – lessons from Arabian Lords
• Similarly, audio lengths, in-game video, timing, lip synching
• Many dialects vs. classical/spoken Arabic
– No references

Tackling the Arabic Speaking Market –
Payment and Monetization
• Credit cards not prevalent, cash oriented society
• Regional prepaid payment card solutions
– International games developers/aggregators need to integrate these solutions
• Example: $40M annual revenue from games on OneCard
• Mobile payment still exists, but not sustainable

Localization Vs. Made-for-MidEast
• Local Content vs. Local Delivery
– Localization, Arabization, Culturalization??
• A well made title will perform if, you can ‘kick it, drive it or shoot it.’
• RPG titles underperform hugely compared to the West
– This is 100% because of the language barrier
• We chose first Arabic title to be language intensive, strategy, to prove the point

Regional Game Dev Scene
• IGDA Middle East
• Dev hubs
– Jordan
– UAE
– KSA
– Egypt
– Lebanon
– Morocco

Regional Opportunities
• Region-wide IP game opportunities for development
• Exponential growth in Internet user base and online usage
• Exponential growth of console market and game success potential.
• Expanding regional online payment methods

Regional Challenges
• Internet penetration at homes/ internet cafes
• Regional investors don’t understand the industry
• Acceptability of content – religion + culture
• Piracy
• Payment methods
• Talent pool

Oded Sharon

Photo by Ron Shoshani

• Population: 7,635,600
20% Arab 75% Jewish
Primary Languages:
Hebrew
Arabic
Secondary Languages:
English (Taught as secondary)
Russian (20% population)

• High tech oasis
– Highest number of start-ups per capita in the world
• Lots of early innovators and entrepreneurs.
• Most US VC's have branches in Israel.
• "A computer for every child" 1995 initiative.

Israeli game industry
• (Photos by and thanks to Nir Miretzky)

• IGDA Chapter formed in 2000
• 850 member in Facebook group "GameIS“
• 3 large conferences with 200-500 participants.
• Monthly social gathering and chapter meetings.

• Birthplace of the technology behind Kinect ,
– home of almost a dozen motion game companies.
• Two major local retailer distributors/publishers:
Hed-Artzi/NMC , Atari Israel

The Israeli gamer

Hardcore/Retail:
Similar to European (mostly UK) and US gamer.
Plays:
Sports FPS Racing

Console Availably (Hardcore):
~4M
PC:
No official retailer

Handheld / Mobile Availably (casual):
~3M
Facebook

Online games (WoW) Facebook (Farmville) Lots of piracy
•According to Atari Israel - All annual retail game sales: $400K-500K
•For single full price titles, average $20K per single title.

Sites
Portals
Blogs
Vgames, Gamer.co.il, Games.co.il, Nana10.co.il, TheGamers.TV
Tipo.co.il
Hamishakia, Newsgeek, The Hebrew Quest, n00blog, gamesgirl.
Forums & community Tapuz, giga beit
Facebook groups.
(full list at : http://www.thegamers.tv/test/nir3.html
)

Sex
(22k people surveyed) male female
Ages:
Interests
7%
<12 13-17 18-24 25-34 >35
Playing online games Articles
Forums
Downloads
11%
Game

• Lots of local Hebrew content : TV, Media, books.
• Non-Israeli books are translated to Hebrew.
• Movies and TV are subtitled , not dubbed.
• Games in Israel are played in English .
• Most Israeli can understand English well.

Challenges in Translation to Hebrew:
• Right to left
• Missing or incompatible words
• Double meanings
• Phrases and idioms
• Cultural references.

Not many examples of games translated to Hebrew in last decade.
some do get subtitles, not in last 4 years.
Titles for kids (E.G. Dora the explorer) do get translated to Hebrew.

Localized online titles
Several Online games were localized and had big success :
Travian.
Icariam

• No need?
• No opportunity?
• Only effective on big titles
• Local entrepreneurs (myself included) are focused on markets outside
Israel

Original Creations in Israel for Israelis
Local success for titles by Local game developers:
Piposh Gindis IAF Falafel king
• Israeli Adver-games are always in Hebrew.
• Religious and Bible games also in Hebrew, and interesting sub market.

Advergame based on one of Israel's most famous
Brands "Bamba" which is a peanut butter flavoured snack.
Free to play RPG using Bamba's kid mascot.
800K Unique visitors, 4M entries .
Won "2009 GameIS award" for best advergame .
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSEpQwaEWls

Mogobe - Virtual world for kids ages 7-12
Developed in Israel , and Israel was first launch country in July 09.
By Jan 2010 was 2 nd Most popular site among children in Israel, after facebook.
Localized around the world with languages, clothing, and location relevant themes.
Penetration: 30% of target audience in Israel opened accounts. 40K make transactions of $6.5 each.
Total revenue $280K just in Israel.

• Mostly PC gamers.
• Lots of young gamers, mobile and PC.
• Tech savvy, early innovators.
• English speakers.
• Influential Bloggers (worldwide).
• Large and innovative developer community.
• If you want to do a motion game with NI, you probably want to do business with Israeli companies.

• Not necessary to translate to Hebrew in order to succeed.
• Next-gen & online would benefit greatly if localized, even if it's only by adding subtitles.
• Marketing to religious sections can be tricky.

Tel-Aviv
No Camels!

Conclusions: Middle East
• Fast growing market
• Lots of business opportunities
• Religion and politics can be challenging

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