Developing Games for the MENA region

A session has finished discussing "Developing Games for he MENA Region", which has been moderated by Sten Slander, the international executive director for Media Evolution.

The panellist of this session were Vince Ghossoub the CEO of Flafel Games, Joseph Shomali the CEO of Play3arabi, Banš Özistek the CEO of Joygame, Hussam Hammo the CEO of Tamatem Games and Abdullah Hamed, Businees Development at Lumba Games. 

Slander asked the panelists if there were "many success stories in the region?"

The panelists had different takes on the matter, Ghossoub stating there were some success stories.

"Yes, we do have some success stories, but we don't have huge successes, only three games."

"There hasn't been rapid growth, we don't scale success, we only have 250 games in Arabic in the App Store.

"We need to gather our data, all of us, then analyse it to understand players' behaviour, which will enable us from learning the challenges we face that are hindering us from monetising." Shomali said. 

But Hamad also supported the argument.

"Yes we do have success stories, in terms of downloads, but in terms of monetisation they were not successful.

"The information is out there, but it is in English, we need to share our knowledge with them."

It is evident that the MENA region has lots of potential but it is still in its infancy stage.