Ceremony takes place on the evening of Tuesday, January 22nd at the prestigious BAFTA 195 Piccadilly, London

The finalists for the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards in association with Game Insight have officially been revealed.

This list represents the cream of the crop of the mobile games industry, from the top games and developers delighting players around the world, to the tools and services companies laying the foundations for success.

After an extensive lobbying process and many hours of deliberation over the final shortlist, you can now see those who made the cut below.

Most of the awards will now be decided by a panel of games industry judges, recognising the hard work of the teams and individuals that have shined over the last year.

The winners will be announced during the awards ceremony on the evening of Tuesday, January 22nd at the prestigious BAFTA 195 Piccadilly, London.

Mobile Stars

This year we added a few new awards: Best Audio/Visual Accomplishment, Best Storytelling, Best Game Engine, Best Service Provider and Eastern Trailblazer.

There are 20 awards in total up for grabs at this year’s ceremony. Fighting for the accolades are 128 companies.

Leading the pack with the most nominations are Tencent (Arena of Valor), Epic Games (Fortnite), Niantic (Pokemon Go), Zynga (Gram Games and NaturalMotion) and indie developer Mountains (Florence) with three each.

The Mobile Legend and Eastern Trailblazer, awards which recognise individuals that have made a significant impact on the mobile games industry, will be revealed at a later date.

The Pocket Gamer People’s Choice meanwhile – an accolade voted for by fans – will begin the nominations process next week, before kicking off voting in December.

The Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards in association with Game Insight will take place after the second day of Pocket Gamer Connects on Tuesday, January 22nd 2019.

It will be hosted at the prestigious BAFTA 195 Piccadilly, London.

For sponsorship details please email Chris James at [email protected].

Don’t forget to register for a ticket to attend the Mobile Games Awards ceremony.

A big thank you to Mobile Games Awards 2019 sponsors Game Insight, Playdemic, Lockwood Publishing and AppOnboard.

The Mobile Games Awards 2019 finalists

Game of the Year

• Badland Brawl – Frogmind
• Fortnite – Epic Games
• Helix Jump – H8 Games
• Holedown – Grapefrukt games
• Jurassic World Alive – Ludia
• Legend of Solgard – Snowprint Studios
• Marvel Strike Force – FoxNext Games
• New Star Manager – New Star Games
• PUBG Mobile – Lightspeed & Quantum Studios (A Tencent studio)
• The Walking Dead: Our World – Next Games

Best Developer

• Big Pixel Studios
• Epic Games
• Gram Games
• Jam City
• King
• Kolibri Games
• NetEase
• Niantic
• Pixel Toys
• Small Giant Games

Best Indie Developer

• Ben Esposito
• Buried Signal
• Game Revenant
• Kukouri Mobile Entertainment
• Mountains
• Nerial
• Simteractive
• Team Alto
• The Secret Police
• Tiny Rebel Games

Best Publisher

• Annapurna Interactive
• BoomBit
• Lion Studios
• PlayStack
• Round Zero
• Scopely
• Tamatem
• Tencent
• Tilting Point
• Voodoo

Best Live Ops

• CSR Racing 2 – NaturalMotion
• Empires & Puzzles – Small Giant Games
• Fastlane: Road to Revenge – Space Ape Games
• Guns of Boom – Game Insight
• Idle Miner Tycoon – Kolibri Games
• Merge Dragons! – Gram Games
• Pokémon GO – Niantic
• Subway Surfers – SYBO Games

Best Audio/Visual Accomplishment

• Alto’s Odyssey – Team Alto
• Asphalt 9: Legends – Gameloft
• ELOH – Broken Rules
• Florence – Mountains
• Homo Machina – Darjeeling
• Only When Howling – Kimberly Savory
• Shadowgun Legends – Madfinger Games
• The Room: Old Sins – Fireproof Games

Best Storytelling

• Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story – Accidental Queens
• DERE EVIL EXE – AppSir
• Florence – Mountains
• G30 – A Memory Maze – Ivan Kovalov
• Love Island: The Game – Fusebox Games
• My Child Lebensborn – Sarepta Studio
• Powerless – Narratio Studios
• Reigns: Her Majesty – Nerial

Best GAAS Tools & Tech

• Akamai
• ChilliConnect
• GameSparks
• Heroic Labs
• Photon
• PlayFab
• Tencent Cloud
• XtraLife

Best Game Engine

• Cocos2d-x
• Construct 3
• Corona
• Defold
• GameMaker Studio 2
• Gideros
• Unity
• Unreal Engine

Best Advertising & UA

• AdTiming
• Appodeal
• AppOnboard
• Facebook
• Google Ads
• IronSource
• Unity Ads
• Vungle

Best Marketing Team

• Four Thirty Three
• FoxNext Games
• Netmarble US
• Next Games
• Outplay
• Peak Games
• Seriously
• Space Ape Games

Best Analytics and Data Tool

• AppCalibre
• AppsFlyer
• deltaDNA
• GameAnalytics
• GameRefinery
• Libring
• Ogury
• Sensor Tower

Best QA and Localisation

• Amber Studio
• GameScribes
• GlobalStep
• Keywords Studios
• MoGi Group
• Pole To Win
• Testronic
• Universally Speaking

Best Technological innovation

• AppOnboard’s App Store Demos
• ARKit 2
• Hatch
• Niantic Real World Platform
• Razer Phone 2
• SpatialOS
• VK Direct Games
• WeChat Mini Games

Best Tools Provider

• Game of Whales
• Haxe Foundation
• Machine
• Megacool
• Perforce
• Skillz
• Synative
• Wappier

Best Recruitment Agency

• Aardvark Swift
• Amiqus
• Datascope
• Games Factory Talents
• Games Jobs Finland
• Interactive
• OPM Response
• Scede

Best Service Provider

• Cellense
• Lab Cave
• Matchmade
• Maverick Media
• Player Research
• SafeDK
• The Specialist Works
• Zorka.Mobi

Mobile Legend

To be announced

Eastern Trailblazer

To be announced

Pocket Gamer People’s Choice

This nominations process for this player-voted award will begin the week of November 26th.

Best of luck to all the finalists and a big thanks to everyone who lobbied.

Article By Craig Chapple
Pocket Gamer Biz

Jordanian mobile games publisher Tamatem has made a big bet in 2013 that localizing globally published games for the Arab market is a good business proposition.

Founder Hassam Hammo recounted in an interview with Venture Beat that the idea came from finding very little Arabic content online when Arabic is “the fourth most spoken language worldwide.”

Someone has to mind the gap, and Tamatem easily found a niche. The bet paid off and investors seized the opportunity. As of February 2018, the young company based in Amman, Jordan has received USD 3.4m in funding, according to Crunchbase.

“The mobile gaming market in the Arab world is expected to become a USD 2.3bn industry in 2022,” affirms Jawanna Sawalha, Communication & PR Supervisor, at Tamatem. “Countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have the highest average rate per paying user (ARPPU) in the world, while countries like China have an ARPPU of around USD 32.4. In the MENA, it’s around  USD 270.55.”

The company has so far brought 40 games to the Arab market. Sawalha says they have four very big games now in their portfolio.

“We worked with our partners in Bulgaria called Casualino to localize their card games VIP Baloot and VIP Tarneeb. Currently, they are both the number one card games in the region with more than 400,000 monthly active users,” she says.

“We also worked with our partners Game Insight from Lithuania to localize their hit title Airport City and we worked with EZ Fun from China to localize two of their games Dynasty Blades and Rage of the Righteous. The original text for all these games was in English and our localization team worked on translating the text into Arabic,” she adds.

The potential is huge, but entering the market isn’t as easy as people think, according to Sawalha.

Fonts, text consistency, and cultural relevance

“One of the biggest challenges we face is text consistency, apart from localizing characters, music, environments, and story, translating the text needs to always be consistent. Our localization team needs to play the game ahead of time, understand every aspect of it and localize the text without literal translation so the meaning doesn’t get lost in translation,” she explains.

“One of the biggest challenges we face is text consistency” — Jawanna Sawalha, Communication & PR Supervisor,  Tamatem

There’s also the issue on fonts. “Many of the available fonts are mostly used for English letters and when used on Arabic will disconnect the letters. So finding the perfect font that works on the Arabic language isn’t easy as well,” she adds.

Then there is always the fact that Arabic is written from right to left and not left to right like other languages, and the letters are connected.

“Finding the perfect font that works on the Arabic language isn’t easy”

Sawalha says that for their teams to localize games in Arabic, they have to play the game ahead of time, understand every aspect of it and localize the text without literal translation so the meaning does not get lost in translation.

“People in the Arab region love to consume content in their own language and people are also very attached to their culture. If a game is not localized to become culturally relevant, some content might be seen as culturally unacceptable and sometimes even insulting,” she reveals. “For example, when localizing one of our games, the original developer had named one of their characters after the name of the Prophet’s wife, in such a case it’s is seen as very insulting.”

“People in the Arab region love to consume content in their own language and people are also very attached to their culture”

From spreadsheets to CAT tools

Tamatem has a localization team that works on translation, localizing characters, music, environments, and even sometimes storyboard.

“We don’t outsource to language service providers (LSPs), but we do hire freelance translators when necessary. But with our experience publishing more than 40 localized games we have become experts in localizing games for the Arabic speaking market,” Sawalha reveals.

“We don’t outsource to language service providers (LSPs), but we do hire freelance translators when necessary”

As a startup, she says that for the longest time they’ve done translations manually on a spreadsheet. “However, right now we are starting to integrate computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools to make the translation process much more efficient,” she says.

While Tamatem doesn’t have an estimate for the exact number of translated word per year, it says its latest games, Rage of the Righteous, had more than 30,000 lines of translation from English to Arabic. Some games have only around half of that, depending on the gameplay, genre, story, and amount of content.

“Our translators, QA and product managers go over the text multiple times before publishing. Even after the game is launched we always look for new ways to improve the translation. It’s an ongoing process to make the game better for our users,” she adds.

No MT for now

Tamatem holds the view that machine translation cannot replace the job of translators and localizers for now.

“I don’t think machine translation can ever replace the job of localizers, especially in the Arabic language because it’s a very complicated language which you can not translate word by word,” Sawalha explains. “Machine translation can maybe make a translator/localizer job faster but it can never replace it.”

“Machine translation can maybe make a translator/localizer job faster but it can never replace it”

While virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are considered the future of gaming, Tamatem’s current focus is mobile games.

“Countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which is our main target right now, has the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world, with very high purchasing power as well as a huge passion for games,” Sawalha reveals. “Right now, we are focusing on growing our team to bring bigger and better games that our users will love!”

Article By Tamatem

A promising company started working in the field of mobile games in 2013 and is valued at more than $8 million today. Here’s a look at Tamatem, a Jordanian mobile gaming company.

Analysts and experts agree that mobile games is a promising and fast-growing industry, which forced decision makers in major economies around the world to pay attention to it. Jordanian entrepreneur Hussam Hummo, the founder and CEO of Tamatem Company, realized that fact as well when he entered the mobile games industry. Tamatem started in the USA back in 2013 through joining 500 Start ups Silicon Valley program to become the first Arabic company entering this program and later return safely after 6 months back to its base in Amman.

Hussam Hummo: Tamatem is the first games publisher in the Arab World. We take games from all around the world and develop them to make them culturally relevant for the Arabic gamer, then we publish them in the Arabic market. Tamatem currently has around 40 available games on IOS and Android. We offer a variety of games: car, cards, strategy and combat games and we still have games that we are working on that will be published soon. The idea of the project started in 2013 when the Arabic market was in great need of Arabic applications, because it is the fourth most spoken language in the world but there was no available content in Arabic. Tamatem today is spreading around the world, we have users from all around the world, not only from the Arab countries, we have users from Australia all the way to USA. All our employees today are located in our office in Amman and we honestly aspire to expand in additional areas very soon.

Tamatem relied on a business model called “revenue sharing” with game developers around the world and it is recording steady and noticeable growth rates. So is the company still depending on funds since it is considered an emerging company? How long will the funding continue?

Hussam Hummo: When we take a game and publish it, we require a percentage of profit along with the marketing team in return of the services we provide. In addition, we develop games in the company and rely on advertisement. We make profits out of advertisement and in-app purchases which is payment for extra content in a game.

Currently, Tamatem has around 20 employees and around 40 million downloads on IOS and Android devices.

Hussam Hummo: Tamatem today is going through its last investment round with a value of $8 million. During the past 4 years, our company attracted several investors and investments from all around the world, starting from USA through 500 Startups then some American investors and later some Angel Investors in the Arab World. Then we had a second investment round in 2014 by Arab and foreigner investors and until now we have “Series A” round, which will end soon. So today the company reached to a stage where it depends completely on itself and does not need extra funding in order for it to complete its daily tasks. The company today is profitable but we consider that funding will help us expand.

Tamatem is another Jordanian success story added to the gaming industry, which is a promising industry in the world of finance and business, a group of young Jordanians who started with a small business idea and grew to become very successful.

Article By Venture Staff

Game Insight has partnered up with Jordan-based mobile games publisher Tamatem to localise Airport City for Arabic-speaking players.

The freshly localised title will launch across the Middle East and North Africa and will be available on iOS and Android.

Airport City is a sim/tycoon mobile game that lets players build and manage an airport, send flights to different cities all over the world and create a city to support their international gateway.

Come fly with me

According to Tamatem, the Middle Eastern and North African mobile games market is expected to become a $2.3 billion industry by 2022. However, Arabic language games are a rarity within app stores with one per cent of titles offering an Arabic option.

“I believe that Arabic mobile users will enjoy Airport City, as it offers an exceptional experience for players to interact with each other and build their own modern-day empires,” said Tamatem CEO Hussam Hammo.

“This collaboration marks the beginning of a great alliance between Tamatem and Game Insight.”

Article By Iain Harris
Pocket Gamer

Mobile publisher Tamatem has brought 40 games to the Arabic-language market and racked up millions of downloads. Its newest title is Airport City, a simulation game from Lithuanian developer Game Insight. It will debut on iOS and Android in that region on April 26.

“The main idea behind the company, and why I started it, is because Arabic is the fourth most spoken language worldwide, yet less than one percent of all content available online is available in Arabic. There’s a huge demand for Arabic apps and content and there’s not enough available,” said Tamatem CEO Hussan Hammo in a call with GamesBeat.

Tamatem is based in Amman, Jordan, but it publishes games that reach countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt. When Hammo pitches the publisher’s service to developers, he says that he often encounters misconceptions about the size of the market. He has to not only pitch Tamatem, but also the region, which has an engaged audience that’s willing to pay for gaming experiences.

“With everything that’s happening in the region, from a political point of view, people are just very skeptical. In the early stages they wonder if I’m serious or just bluffing,” said Hammo. “Then they start looking at services like App Annie and they see all this money flowing from international developers in the region, and in comparison to other regions, how much money is being made in the region. ”

Hammo started the company in 2013 when he received backing from the 500 Startups accelerator and seed fund for his vision of bringing international games to the market as well as fostering local developers. Earlier this year, it raised $2.5 million in a Series A investment round led by Wamda Capital.

Finding games to bring to the Middle East

Tamatem publishes a wide variety of games, like Bulgarian studio Casualino‘s card game Belote and Chinese developer EZFun’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dynasty Blades (called Suqoor Al Ard in Arabic). It’s also developed its own games in-house like the racer Shake the Metal.

For a while, Hammo looked to China in search of quality games to publish in the Arabic market. It’s difficult brokering publishing deals with huge players like the Chinese tech giant Tencent, so Tamatem sought smaller “second-tier developers.” But in his recent trips to the country, he’s noticed that the giants are swallowing up a lot of the competition. So next year, he’s planning on focusing more on the U.S. and Europe, which may be facilitated by the new partnership with Game Insight.

“There may be a major shift happening in China toward consolidation of game developers. It’s similar to what happened in every other industry,” said Hammo. “You don’t find that happening as strongly in Europe or the U.S., although you do still have Supercell and these other huge guys. You still find people popping up to the surface from time to time. In China, no one is popping up. The giants dominate everything.”

The partnership with Lithuanian studio Game Insight could serve as an opportunity to reach out to other Eastern European developers. And Tamatem anticipates that Airport City will do well with Arabic players, who gravitate toward the same games as those in the U.S. market and enjoy simulator games, RPGs, and social games. Since 2014, Airport City has been downloaded more than 10 million times and earned over $25 million from in-app purchases, according to estimates by the market analyst Sensor Tower.

“We’re trying to build a sustainable, scalable model, so we’re not dependent on just one game to generate our revenue, and we’re picking games that have already been proven somewhere else in the world,” said Hammo. “The games we pick have very solid numbers in terms of traction, retention, pay rate, and all those metrics that we’re focusing on.”

The complexity of localization

When Tamatem finds a game that it wants to bring to the Arabic market, that’s only the first step. The publisher must localize the titles to appeal to the audience.

“Every time we tell people that we do localization, they think we just look at female characters and cover them up,” said Hammo. “That’s really not the case. But you need to be cautious about content that you’re providing.”

Sometimes it is the case — for instance, Hammo encountered a game that featured a scantily clad woman named Fatima. “That’s the name of the Prophet’s daughter,” he explained. “Putting that name on that image would be a nightmare for [the developer].”

But often, the localization is much more in-depth than just changing certain design aspects. The publisher customizes the icons and previews on the Apple App Store and Google Play in order to effectively market the game. It translates the content into Arabic, which is a complex language with its own technical issues like spacing the characters. For one game, Tamatem switched out the music with an entirely new soundtrack that’s comprised only of “body sounds” like snapping, humming, and singing. That’s because the original music would have offended many people in Saudi Arabia.

“The game had music in it, like any normal game in the world, but this type of music wasn’t as culturally accepted in Saudi Arabia in specific,” said Hammo. “From a religious point of view, for many people in Saudi – Saudi specifically, not across all Arab countries – they believe that this type of music, normal music we listen to every day, is just forbidden. You can’t change the culture. You can’t just tell people that this doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s difficult for international developers to have an idea of what to expect when they go to the Middle East. But what about local studios, who would be able to anticipate what Arabic players want from a game?

Hammo says that it’s difficult finding developers in the region, which doesn’t have too many game design courses at its universities. And, perhaps more crucially, a lot of people don’t think it’s possible to build a business around games. Tamatem even has trouble hiring sometimes because people are interested in app development, but not games.

“There are initiatives happening in the region to encourage students to think about gaming as a business, but I still believe there’s a lot more work that has to be done in the field,” said Hammo. “We’ve tried a lot as far as investing in indie developers, or having internal studios, external studios. We had a studio in Egypt. We had affiliations with different studios from around. But we still feel there’s a gap between the indie developers here and indie developers, for example, in Europe or East Asia, in terms of knowledge and education and the will to learn.”

But maybe that will change soon. The Middle East and Africa region is growing 25 percent year-over-year, and the games industry on the whole is poised to hit $143.5 billion by 2020. As publishers like Tamatem continue to prove the buying power of the Middle Eastern market, perhaps more indie developers will spring up and tackle the challenge of creating homegrown games.

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Article By Stephanie Chan
Venture Beat

Tamatem, one of the leading game developers in the MENA region, recently raised $2.5 million in Series A investment and aims to use the funding to expand offerings and increase market share.

 When people moved from web-based games to mobile-based ones, Hussam Hammo saw an opportunity that he just had to tap. His previous company, a gaming studio named Wizards Productions, had closed due to this change in trends and he realised that the opportunity in the mobile gaming market was huge and virtually untapped. 

Hussam went knocking on the doors of every investor he knew in the region but they all shut him down because his previous company had closed down. In early 2013, Hussam joined the acceleration programme at 500 Startups in Silicon Valley; he was the first Arab to join the programme and by the end of 2013 Tamatem was officially a launched startup.

The team started with only three employees; today, Tamatem has 26 employees, split across different departments: marketing, localisation, community and art.

The background

Hussam graduated from Princess Sumaya University of Science and Technology in 2006. Not so long after, in 2007, he received the Queen Rania Award for Entrepreneurship after founding Faye3.com, the first Arabic social network, which was acquired by Maktoob.com. After leaving Maktoob.com, in 2009, Hussam co-founded Wizards Productions, a gaming studio developing web-based Arabic games. However, Wizards Productions didn’t do as well as his earlier company, which is why Hussam was looking at other avenues.

In 2013, he founded Tamatem after returning from the acceleration programme at 500 Startups in Silicon Valley. Tamatem, which was officially launched in January 2014, has – as of today – published 40 games that have achieved more than 45 million downloads.

Tamatem partners with developers and gaming studios from around the world, takes their games and localises them to make culturally relevant for the Arab gamer and, in return, splits revenues with the studios depending on the deal.

“By localise we don’t only mean translating the game, we do everything from changing environments, music, characters, and language,” Hussam says.

Tamatem has been working and partnering with some of best developers and studios from around the world, to bring the highest quality games possible to the region. They focus on publishing racing, drifting, RPG-MMO, strategy, puzzle and word and trivia games. 

Tamatem has been growing 150 percent YoY with significant growth of 20 percent MoM.

The market

The MENA’s mobile gaming market is severely underserved with less than 1 percent of games on app stores in Arabic, which creates a huge gap for users to consume culturally relevant and localised mobile games.

According to Strategy&, the MENA’s (Middle East and North Africa) mobile gaming market is expected to become a $2.3 billion industry in 2022, triple of what it currently is. The market in Saudi Arabia currently has the highest ARPPU in the world; China, for example, has an ARPPU of $32 while in Saudi Arabia, it is around $270. 

In January 2018, Tamatem raised a $2.5 million Series A investment with funding lead by Wamda Capital, Discovery Nusantava Capital, Raed Ventures, and Vision Venture Capital. Existing investors include 500 Startups, Kima Ventures, Arzan VC, and Kai Huang.

The new funding will be used for closing bigger deals for better hardcore mobile games, expansion, and also hiring aimed at growing market share. 

“We, at Tamatem, have been working and partnering with some of the best developers and studios in the world, to bring the highest quality games possible to the region,” Hussam says. “This investment will help us localise better mobile games and will also allow us dig deeper into the Arab gaming market.”

Article By Vallabh Rao
Your Story

MENA mobile market expected to triple by 2022, but only 1% of games are localised to Arabic

After raising $2.5 million in Series A funding, Jordanian-based mobile publisher Tamatem is looking to plug a gap in the market by localising more games into Arabic.

According to global consulting firm Strategy&, the Middle-East North African (MENA) mobile gaming market is expected to triple its current value by 2022, growing into a $2.3 billion industry.

Additionally, the market in Saudi Arabia currently has the highest average revenue per paying user in the world; China for example has an ARPPU of $32 compared to roughly $270 in Saudi Arabia.

However, the MENA mobile gaming market is notably underserved with less than 1% of games being localised into Arabic.

“Tamatem has been working and partnering with some of the best developers and studios from around the world, to bring the highest quality games possible to the region,” said founder and CEO Hussam Hammo.

“This investment will help us localise better mobile games and will also allow us dig deeper into the Arab gaming market.”

Led by Wamda Capital, the new funding will allow the company to capture a larger share of the MENA market, establish agreements with international game developers, and hire new talent.

“At Wamda Capital we have been closely monitoring the evolution of the regional gaming market and believe there to be a very significant opportunity in further developing the space driven by strong consumer demand for access to global titles adapted for local preferences,” Wamda Capital’s managing partner, Khaled Talhouni said.

Additional investors included Discovery Nusantara Capital, Raed Ventures, Vision Venture Capital and Seed Equity Venture Partners.

Founded in 2013, Tamatem has published over 40 games, reaching a total of more than 50 million downloads in the MENA region.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Hussam and the Tamatem team in our first investment in the gaming space,” Talhouni added. “The company has a track record that is second to none in publishing and localising titles in regional markets.”

Article By Ivy Taylor
Games Industry.biz

Tamatem, a startup backed by 500 Startups that creates localised versions of popular games so that they resonate better with users in Arabic speaking countries, has picked up $2.5 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Wamda Capital, with participation from Discovery Nusantara Capital, Raed Ventures, Vision Venture Capital, and Seed Equity Venture Partners.

It will be used by Tamatem to enable it to close deals with more international game developers in order to capture a bigger market share in MENA. In addition, the new capital will see the company increase headcount as it bids to attract more quality talent in the region.

That, founder and CEO Hussam Hammo tells me, is a long way from the startup’s early days when in 2013 local investors shunned Tamatem, citing its founder’s previous “failure” as co-founder of browser-based gaming studio ‘Wizards Productions’. After some initial success and a seed round, Wizards dead-pooled four years into its existence.

“When the company closed, I kept pushing to establish a mobile games company. The opportunity is huge!” he says. “Arabic is the fourth most spoken language, and almost no content is available on the app stores. I knocked on the doors of every investor I dealt with in the region, but their response was: your previous company failed, you will most probably fail again. I was a single founder and I had no team. I just had a couple of prototypes and an investment deck. I applied to 500 Startups, and they believed in me”.

To put the opportunity in context, Hammo says MENA’s mobile gaming market is “severely underserved” with less than 1 percent of app store games available in Arabic. This creates a huge gap for users who want to consume culturally relevant and localised mobile games. This doesn’t just mean translating the written or spoken parts of a game, but also other creative or story elements so that a title is relatable and will resonate in Arabic speaking countries.

For example, Tamatem localised the racing/drifting game Shake the Metal for the MENA market, including swapping out graphical elements and the soundtrack. The results garnered 5 million downloads.

Explains the startup’s founder: “When users worldwide think about this type of game, they will think about driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis. In the Middle East, users are interested in driving the Toyota Camry or the Hilux. Music was also a big win in our case, instead of using soundtracks, which a lot of the Saudi Arabia audience will consider religiously forbidden, we used a specific type of music that uses body sounds rather than instruments”.

Article By Steve O’Hear