For the past three years, the UAE national Team has been participating in the World Cyber Games – WCG in Germany, USA and China, and this year the winning team will travel to Korea in December to be part of the very competitive e-sports festival. Earlier this month the organizers of the Etisalat XGames – the World Game Championship (WGC), INDEX Conferences & Exhibitions Organisation Est. had organized the World Game Championship in Kuwait for the first time to select the gamers for the Counter Strike (1.6) team. A tournament was held in at the Discovery Mall in collaboration with Eclipse Gaming Cafe which was broadcasted on a national TV in Kuwait.

Yesterday, the organizers announced the names of the UAE National Team that will represent the UAE in the WCG finals in Korea. Ahmed Abdul Qader Albanna form Dubai, Abdulla Ahmed Alnekhailawi from Sharjah, Ibrahim Mohamed Almuaini from Sharjah, Abdulla Mohamed Almarzooqi from Sharjah and Hamad Ahmed Almansoori from Al Ain made it to the finals.

This year, more than 2000 gamers participated in the tournament from the UAE and the Gulf Region starting from the American University in Sharjah, then the Escape Gaming Cafe and the Flamingo Gaming Cafe. Moreover, the GameHolics and Impulse teams participated at the biggest Counter-Strike tournament in Spain known as GameGune.

The Etisalat XGames – the World Game Championship (WGC) 2011 featured three PC games; Counter Strike 1.6, Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 and Super Street Fighter 4 where the grand prize was 18,000 AED. The winning team of Counter Strike 1.6 will compete with the best Counter Strike (CS 1.6) teams from Europe, Asia, North America, and South America.

The World Cyber Games – WCG is the world’s first “Cyber Game Festival”, designed to build a healthy cyber culture where best gamers from all over the world will gather into different cities to share the excitement and fun of the game tournaments. This year, the grand final will be hosted by Busan Metropolitan City, South Korea and elite gamers from all around the world including UAE will flock to the Busan Exhibition & Convention Center (BEXCO) this December to compete for the title of world’s best gamers.

According to ABI’s research’s latest study “Gaming in the Cloud”, the worldwide online gaming market is projected to grow to $20 billion by 2012. The Middle East is currently seen as the next booming gaming market which is estimated at $10 billion. This includes also the mobile phone market and PC platforms overwhelming advantage. The region has more than 75 million people using the internet including Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa while Facebook by itself hold more than 55 million users, and is forecast to grow five-fold to 250 million by 2015. In addition, approximately 60 percent of the demographic in this region are under the age of 25, thus the young people representing gaming markets are very remarkable.

The Etisalat XGames – the World Game Championship (WGC) has been tagged as the most anticipated video game tournament in the region and is a proud partner of the Dubai World Game Expo – which is the largest computer games exhibition in the region scheduled from 30 November – 3 December 2011 and organized by INDEX Conferences & Exhibitions Organisation Est. -Member of INDEX Holding. Mr. Paul Wilson, Director of INDEX Conferences & Exhibitions Organisation Est. said: “We are very excited to partner with the World Cyber Games – WCG. Our attendees hunger for video games and the WCG will provide fans with the best of the best. The WCG UAE National Final is a unique event that we are honored to host.

“The participants and fans of the World Cyber Games and Etisalat XGames – World Game Championship (WGC) are some of the most technologically-savvy individuals” added Mr. Wilson.
The World Cyber Games – WCG National Finals was held in conjunction with the Etisalat XGames – the World Game Championship (WGC) at Mall of Emirates in Dubai and lasted for two days. The WCG National Finals and the World Game Championship are sponsored by Etisalat, Samsung, twofour54, Emax, Dell, Alienware, Logitech, NVIDIA, ZOTAC, Golden Systems, ASUS, and Western Digital.

After tucking into our gracefully wrapped shawarmas, May El Husseiny and Lina Chaaban from Sony Playstation Middle East stepped forward to give us the scoop on what they had in store for us in the coming months. First off was an update on GAMES11 – this year it’s being held at The Dubai Mall Ice Rink, from Sept 22nd to 24th and promises to be even better than last year. There were around 50,000 attendees at GAMES10, and it’s going to be an easy task to surpass that this year. We will of course be bringing you all the coverage from the show, so make sure you check back with us and on the official GAMES11 website.

Now it’s evident that there’s plenty of build-up leading to the release of Uncharted 3, and Sony were eager to get our tongues wagging with an epic announcement known as Uncharted: Treasure Hunter. While I would love to sit and spill all of the glorious details, I’m going to wait a bit longer for a dedicated post, but all I can say is that if you ever thought you could pull off adventure the way Nathan Drake does, your chance will be coming up sooner than you think.

We wrapped up the evening with a quick lucky draw, where the winner would walk away with a canvas print of the Uncharted artwork that was hanging on the wall. The lucky winner was Khalid (@KhalidAKH) who quite happily showed off his trophy.

With GAMES11 around the corner and some great games being released in the months to come, it’s going to be a busy month for Sony, so make sure you watch this space for all the news and updates.

A special thank you to Sony Playstation Middle East for inviting us along! For a gallery of our Iftar antics, click here.

Lag in the Middle East is so prevalent, it’s the most believable excuse for the lack of skill. Have a poor K/D ratio? Blame it on lag. Got killed from out of nowhere? Blame it on lag! Got killed even if you fired first, regardless of your poor aim? Blame it on lag, sir!

But it’s not the ISP (Internet service provider) that’s always to blame. The advantage players in the US and UK have is the large community base. Almost 60% of the US population are gamers – we are sure a large chunk of that are online players as well. Coupled with full regional support by publishers with dedicated servers, and local matchmaking features from Xbox Live and PSN, lag is, unless the game is poorly coded, almost non-existent. We in the Middle East, have no such luck. There are barely any dedicated servers from the actual publishers. Many users have to shell out from their own pocket to host one. Xbox Live is overlooked, there is no support for most of the region, hence matchmaking within the region is impossible. PSN does well on this front, but let’s be honest, it only works on Call of Duty.

Multiplayer games, then, are…sort of pointless. Only pursued by the hardcore, dedicated among us that will bare the zappings and un-aimed trappings of the system to have their fix.

The situation isn’t too dire, however. There are games that you can play with almost none to little lag; that, although does gum up with a bit of a twitch here and there, provides a mostly enjoyable online experience.

We did a bit of digging, and based on our experience and of others in the community, have come up with a list of games that either has a regional server, Asian or European servers that provide little lag, or just does exceedingly well with the matchmaking and netcode. Of course, finding completely lag free games are impossible, so expect at least ~120ms pings on most of the servers (or orange to green bars when on consoles). However, they don’t dither too much, the netcode compensates well for the delayed response and puts up a smooth, annoyance-free matches. So, let’s begin!

Halo: Reach

Bungie knows how to make brilliant first person shooters, there’s no denying that. What they also excel at is making a great infrastructure to provide one of the best online multiplayer matches on any console and pc. Of course, Microsoft plays quite a significant role in this as they have multiple server hubs setup throughout the world for their Xbox Live service to ensure optimal network connections for their online gamers. Which is also why we’re all paying $60 a year.

My personal experience with Halo 3 in the early days was still a bit iffy as Bungie was trying to sort out the server loads from the overwhelming demand as the game launched back in 2007. In a couple of months though, things started to get really smooth. Gone were the Yellow and sometimes Red connection bars, and what I had now was a constant Full green connection. And this is while playing with people anywhere in Europe. US connections resulted in either Green connections, or Yellow connections which was the case most of the time.

Now with Halo Reach, Bungie has pretty much perfected online multiplayer gaming, as I’m sure Microsoft is also providing their full networking support for their marquee title. I almost never get a connection below full Green on my 8mb Du connection at home. If the majority of a match’s players are from US or (very rarely) Japan, then I might get a mid-level Yellow connection bar. Otherwise anywhere in Europe or within the region (whole of Middle East and Asia) is all full green. This is why I always go back to this game, because I know my online experience will be nothing short of amazing.

The battlehorn was set at 5pm, and after the initial tweaks, it was a nonstop ‘action-fest’ of some truly nail biting matches. We had a few drop outs, some teams were unable to locate their team members apparently, but those who did make it ensured heart pounding action and some fantastic come backs.

The tournament hit the epic scale in the finals however, as team MOH A and Team WET fought closely for the title. There were three rounds for the finals: Search and Destroy, Domination, and the tie-breaker, Team Deathmatch. MOH A were clearly the crowd favorites, what with having players with a remarkable skill of gunning you down within a second after they have spotted you. However, the unseemingly players of WET proved a little too hot to handle, humbling the favorites to a loss of 4-1 in Search and Destroy. MOH A made a fighting comeback in Domination, winning the round, and ushering the match into the final, tie-breaker round of Team Deathmatch. What ensued was a thrilling neck-to-neck showcase of superb skill and amazing team coordination. The game went down the wire till the very last minute, which you can watch below, where WET raced ahead to grab the champions title. The winners (each) won some sweet Razer gear, including a DeathAdder gaming mouse, Carcharias gaming headset, Goliathus mousepad, and a specialized messenger bag.

Tournament winners Team WET holding their well fought for Razer gear.

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We’re seeing a lot more events to promote upcoming games, such as the Infamous 2 event at Mall of the Emirates – will we be seeing more of these for future releases?
Well we will have Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 releasing in the coming months, so these will be our main focus, and we hope to tie it in with GAMES 11, in addition to our continued promotion of Playstation Move and its upcoming titles. And of course once Playstation Vita launches we’ll be getting it into people’s hands and letting them experience it themselves. So in short, yes; there will be these kind of events to look forward to in the months to come.

The obvious question to ask is do you think that these kind of hands-on events help change people’s opinions of the game or to get familiar with the consoles, and in the end influence them into buying the game or console?
Well there are two ways of really looking at this; the first group of people are already familiar with the game or the console and are really just looking to try it out. Then there are the second group of people who might have not heard of a particular game or spent time on the console, so they stop by to see what’s going on an possibly give it a shot themselves. We try and make our events as interesting and user-friendly as possible, so that everyone can take part in them. It’s hard to measure whether these events eventually lead to people buying the game or the console, but regardless you always get a lot of attention at these events, so on the whole it’s probably the best way to go about promoting a game or franchise.

On a consumer level, we’ve seen 3D TVs and 3D gaming enter into the household, with of course some great offerings from the likes of Sony. What do you think the months ahead and moving into 2012 have in store for consumers looking to have that at-home 3D experience?
If you go into any electronic store today you’ll see that probably half of the TVs are 3D enabled or such, but it’s hard to say if people actually use the 3D features or not. The general perception is that 3D hasn’t taken off the way that people might have envisioned it to have done so, but with the 3D capabilities of the PS3 and compatible games paired with a 3D TV, it makes for an immersive at-home 3D experience. It might not be for everybody, but it’s something that people can consider having – in the same way that you can play Resistance 3 with a Move controller or a regular one, the option is there for 2D or 3D, whatever you find comfortable.

One of the announcements to take away from E3 of course was the Playstation Vita, and having had some time on it myself I must say I was impressed. What are your game plans for Vita in the region?
Well we certainly hope to get some units here before the official launch to try and get the word out a bit, as well as potential pre-order campaigns for consumers and possible tie-ins with local mobile operators for the 3G versions. It’s been a while since we launched a new format, so we’ll certainly give it due justice in terms of marketing. We don’t have a fixed launch date just yet, but hopefully it will be along the lines of Europe and the rest of the world.

Staying with the Middle East, some publishers have been releasing localized support for their games or providing DLC for the region, examples being FIFA 12 coming out in Arabic. We also recently chatted with David Reeves from Capcom Europe who said that the ME region is worth $750 million dollars – what do you think has happened in the past years for publishers to recognize that the ME market is now playing in the league of the big boys?
There have been a host of factors that have contributed to this – firstly from an economic point of view the ME region has come through the last few years relatively unscathed compared to other parts of the world. But what’s been the biggest factor to be honest is the Playstation 3 itself; this has been the first format that’s been distributed around the region, it’s done over a million which is ahead of anything else, and relatively unpirated. So all of a sudden you have huge markets like Saudi Arabia where if a publisher 2,000 units 5 years ago, that would be considered a feat – today you’re looking at 100 times that number, so things like the localization of FIFA wouldn’t happen unless you got to those kind of figures. We’ve been here a long time and obviously believed in the region, and we try and tell other publishers as much as we can, because the more publishers are here the better. It creates a kind of great gaming ecosystem where frankly everyone stands to benefit, and hopefully that would expand to local development or IPs. Our business has always been strong here and we’re hoping it stays that way.

The PSN is now back online and in full force and you highlighted that the Store figures were very encouraging and reflected on customer loyalty, not to mention the Welcome Back program. Do you know if  people are still putting in their credit card details to purchase things from the Store, or are they heading down to retailers to purchase the pre-paid Store cards?
One thing we noticed here when we introduced the prepaid cards here is that the local revenues for stores went up because of that because generally this isn’t yet a very credit-card oriented society; people still prefer to shop with cash at stores. The cards have been hugely successful, and we’re hoping to do the same with other stores such as Qatar or Bahrain, but also expand to possibly try and do DLC through the same kind of cards. There’s a project on trial in the US where at the checkout you get recommended DLC for the game you are purchasing, and get a redeemable code for it instantly, thus making it easier for people to get content. There’s also the option of expanding past game DLC to include video, music etc, but again that poses its own challenges.

With the larger capacity PS3s coming onto the market and high-speed internet now being affordable and readily available, do you think that a large portion of future game sales will come from digital downloads versus retail copies or is it pretty much an even deal?
A Playstation 3 game is generally upwards of 10 to 15Gb, so you’re looking at a pretty long download time here. In terms of our new releases, Infamous 2 was the first game that we did as a digital download, as percentage of online game sales is still relatively small compared to retail copies. In time that may change, but for the moment I think it’s best keeping things like add-on packs and other DLC as downloads, and keep the full games on disc.

One of the things you mentioned in your presentation is how strong the Playstation 2 is doing, despite being a number of years old. On one hand, you’ve got the Playstation 2 with quite a strong amount of piracy and a low price point, and on the other hand you have the Playstation 3 with a higher price point and no piracy – how do the figures stack up?
We’ve gotten to a million PS3s much quicker than we got to a million PS2s – people are hungry for gaming in the region and they’re willing to pay for it. There might not be a lot of PS2 development going on at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a strong seller. I look after India as well, and the Playstation 2 did extremely well there during April of this year, so we’re also producing relevant content for that region from experienced developers. Back here in the Middle East, we’re lucky that we have three strong-selling formats to contend with, and when the PS Vita launches we’ll have another great platform to get out to the public.

We kicked off at 12pm with a mob of restless gamers eager to get into the venue. We had a host of games on show including Infamous 2, Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, F.E.A.R 3, WWE All Stars, and many more. Tournaments for FIFA, Starcraft II, Black Ops and WWE All Stars were also being held, and the first one to kick off was Starcraft II. The gamers made it all looks so easy, with their symphony of mouse clicks and keyboard tapping, but the stakes were high as round by round the players were eliminated. In the end the winners were declared, with Ibrahim (Papoolee) coming in first place, Feroz (Gunman) coming in second, Abdalla Baik (Xothermek) in third, and IMEscapeBest in fourth. The winner was rewarded with one kick-ass PC by us, with a Linksys router and a Razer. The runners up received Starcraft gear courtesy Razer.

Next up we had WWE All Stars, which was a surprisingly large turnout. As clotheslines led to submission holds, the players were eliminated from the ring, and finally Mohammed Kachwala (winner) and Ummer Yousuf (runner’s up) came out triumphant. The winners received a Xbox 360 S 4GB plus a Linksys router, and Razer Onzo controller, resp.