Publisher interview - DAO Games
Middle East gaming is becoming big business, with publishers now looking to localise more AAA titles into Arabic as well as show a presence in the region. But what about actual publishers and developers based in the Middle East? Are they trying to help promote the region by producing content in Arabic for the Arabic audience, or is it too much competition for them to handle the titans of the games publishing and developing world?
Well, ArabicGamers caught up with Naji Robehmed, COO at Dubai based DAO Games, a company that is looking to acquire licenses early in development stages from around the world to localise and into the Arabic language ready for launch at the same time as the rest of the world.
Tell us a little bit about DAO Games and your structure?
DAO Games is a new publisher with its headquarters in Dubai, covering both Middle East and Turkish markets. DAO Games was born out of the dream of two hard core gamers who happen to be successful executives with a combined 40 years of experience planning and growing businesses for some of the biggest IT companies in the world. Together they created DAO Games to combine their professional talents with their passion for gaming. At DAO Games, our mission is to provide Arabic- and Turkish-speaking gamers with the latest and highest quality innovative online games licensed from leading global studios. Our core business is publish free to play MMO games that deliver deeply immersive and engaging gaming experience.
You're one of few Middle East publishers, how important do you think gaming is now in the Middle East?
We feel that Middle East market is one of the fastest growing markets for online games, and as you rightfully said, there aren’t many publishers in the region for online games, and with such a market, we feel that there is enough room for more content that meets today’s players expectation and needs. We at DAO Games wanted to break the mould and try to bring content of high quality to the region, just as innovative and launched at the same time as the rest of the world. We feel that the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) players have the right to access those games in our own language at the same time as the rest of world (not a few years later as has been the case so far).
What challenges face you as a Middle East publisher?
Arabic language is very important for us, so maintaining a high quality online gaming experience in Arabic is one of our key objectives and promises, therefore, when localising, we have to re-write the whole game text / story / characters / weapons / items, etc… whereby trying to maintain the balance of the game lore and still injecting local flavour into it. We believe we have found that balance and we look forward to players feedback on that. At the same time, the developers we work with find difficulties initially in integrating Arabic text into the game, so we work closely with them to guide them on the potential issues / loopholes / problems and how to work around them, which requires a lot of QA and time.
Will you be licensing games, or will you be creating your own IP?
Currently, our focus as DAO Games is to license high quality games from leading studios, creating our own IP is something we thought of, but we are not ready for it. We prefer at the moment to focus our efforts, energy and resources to deliver a great experience to our players with the titles we select and grow a community of like-minded players who are here to have fun and enjoy either deep immersive story line (PVE) or Player Versus Player (PvP) competitive gameplay.
What kind of games do you look for? Are there restrictions to what you can do with the Middle Eastern audience?
We look for games that are still in the development stage, so we can have enough time to discuss and plan with the developer how best to synchronise the launch of the game so that MENA is part of the world-wide launch plans. Off course, the selection of the title also goes through a thorough testing phase to ensure the game maintains the high quality innovation and immersive experience in line with our vision. Also the content ishas to be suitable for our market and if/where needed we can amend the content to our needs. To give you an example, in the process of selecting the three games we have now, we tested over 50 games, some were a no go from the moment we launched the game and others went through thorough discussions yet didn’t make it because they couldn’t meet either the deadlines we wanted or the content we were comfortable with.
If licensing, how do you convince the publishers the game will be successful in the Middle East?
It is a simple answer to a good question, if the game is a good game, and we are convinced about it, then we put a plan to the developers explaining the market potential and how we would run and manage the game. So far 10 out of 10 times, the studio / developer were wowed by our vision / strategy and wanted to work with us, the difficult part in general would be to find common grounds. For example, we had couple of studios with whom we felt a great synergy and chemistry, but there was no immediate title to work together on, so we mutually agreed to work on their future titles which we'll see in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
The Middle East has always been a bit of a dangerous territory for publishers because of the issues surrounding piracy. How has this changed in recent years?
Luckily, when it comes to MMO games, there is no issue of piracy, but there are other issues of course. Overall, we feel that there is a lot of improvements on that front, both from a market perspective or from a technological perspective.
Why did you choose MMO games, and a free to play MMO at that?
It is our passion to start with MMO games but more importantly, allows us to deliver a service to the player that keeps evolving and can keep the player entertained for a longer periods than traditional single player / console games. As you know, an MMO game if managed, maintained and updated, can live for 10+ years, which if you come to think about, very few entertainment content can have this life cycle (some TV series maybe!).
Is there a possibility that some of the story may be lost because of the cultural differences between China and the Middle East?
Not all the stories are designed for Chinese markets, for example both story driven games we are launching have their stories taking place in known settings (e.g. Greek mythology and Mechanical-Industrial/ Magical settings), those stories will feel familiar to the players in our region as they definitely played many games in similar settings.
There is a lot of emphasis on the beauty of the game. Will players with lower spec PCs be able to experience the game in the same way as those with high end PCs?
That is always a challenge but, I can answer yes to your question since we did those tests with low specs and felt that the games maintained their beauty and fun elements without any problems.
What is the appetite for games in the Middle East?
It is very high since as you know, the Middle East region median age is 26.5 years old, therefore, we are all young at heart and love to enjoy a good fun story or competitive PVP match.
Why did you choose Turkish too, it's a complicated area, doesn't have the same language and it could be argued that it's a European state and not an Arab state?
We have a Turkish team dedicated for the Turkish market, which has its own requirements and needs and we make sure to respect the Turkish player needs the same way we respect the Arabic player needs, each team is focused on delivering the best high quality experience we promise to its respective market and players, We also feel that Turkey is a market with strong roots both in Europe & Middle East. There are many common points with our region when it comes to likes & dislikes in gaming and we felt we could in fact address quite well the expectations from the players there!
Is there a digital infrastructure that will support gamers?
Of course, we have built a state of the art data centre with high redundancies to be able to deliver the high quality experience to our players.
Talk to us about the games you have? Will they be localised into Arabic?
We announced two games so far, a third game is already signed and will be announced shortly. The two games announced are City of Steam from the Mechanist Studio and The Lost Titans from ZQ Games. Both games are 3D Worlds with immersive high quality game play and they can be played from anywhere without the need to download the full client, all our games will be available in Arabic (we plan Arabic first and then English).
City of Steam has been called one of the most anticipated MMO games in 2013 by few gaming sites, and both games have been praised by the different gaming press for their innovative approach. I would be more then happy to do a separate article / questionnaire for each game whereby I can take you through the features, storyline, plans, etc.. for each one.
What do you hope to achieve as a publisher in the Middle East?
We would be happy the moment we see the community praising our games and services and consider DAO Games and NovaWorlds (our games portal) their primary source for online MMO games.
How can you compete with the big, AAA titles?
This is not comparing apples to apples, but in general, we are focused on our market, what we do, we do with the MENA gamer in mind, I would like to think that our titles are the AAA titles of the MENA region.
Is console gaming a lost cause in the Middle East?
This is not our focus area, so I won’t be able to comment much on that space.