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Fighting off an army invasion
My friends and I had an interesting Friday night. For starters, our home city was invaded by a massive army, known as the Horde.
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Business Reporter
- Published: 00:13 July 26, 2008
My friends and I had an interesting Friday night. For starters, our home city was invaded by a massive army, known as the Horde.
There were easily a hundred of them, and we didn't see it coming, despite sighting spies inside the city immediately before the attack.
In retaliation, we gathered our forces and launched a counter attack against the Horde's main city. After a fierce but futile battle at the opponent's city gates, we were forced to retreat, but a small crew of about 11 of us turned our attention to another city where we suspected the first attack had originated there.
Sneaking in through the sewer system, we launched a surprise attack. Eventually forced to retreat from this city too, we hitched a ride on a zeppelin heading out of town, although we were later thrown off by guards for fighting.
No, this wasn't some Friday brunch-induced hallucination. The above events really did happen, although obviously not in the real world. They took place on a networked server owned by Blizzard software, whose European offices are headquartered in Paris. It was all part of a game called World of Warcraft.
This is my dirty little secret. I'm a World of Warcraft junkie. This isn't a shoot'em-up game, but an MMOG, or massively multiplayer online games. Every person involved in the attack, easily two hundred or more, were people living from Scotland to Dubai, and there are a lot of us. There are an estimated 10 million global subscribers to WoW, which was launched in 2004.
The business model is simple. A company designs a massive online world - there are currently three continents in WoW - then invites people to come play there for around Dh66 a month. WoW attracts hard-core gamers as well as social players. You can often find people chatting and goofing off. You may laugh, but the industry is growing, which some analysts predicting revenues from MMOGs will grow to over $3.5 billion next year, with over 16 million people playing.
In terms of revenue, that isn't massive, especially for the video game industry. Microsoft made more than that selling game consoles, (19 million Xboxes at $299 a pop), but in Blizzard's defence, it didn't have to build or ship any consoles. It just make and sell the software, operate the servers, and watch the revenue from subscriptions roll in.
Other companies have picked up on this model too. Microsoft has released its own MMOG, called Age of Conan, and a number of other companies have created MMOGs based on Star Trek, the Matrix and the Lord of the Rings, although WoW still easily dominates in terms of subscriptions.
Don't think this is what Western geeks do for fun either. Video games have a strong hold here in the region, with Arabs and non-Arabs alike getting involved. This interest in gaming is also attracting companies from abroad, including Turtle Entertainment, a company that hosts a network for sports gamers and which recently hosted the World of Warcraft Global Challenge in Sweden.
Turtle CEO Jens Hilgers recently announced that Dubai had been added to a series of video game tournament, part of which will be held in October at Gitex. The tournament will allow locals to compete again professional gamers. That's right. Professional gamers. Hilgers predicts Dubai gamers “are going to have a hard time'' against the pros, but he still expects the events to filled.
“The Middle East has a tremendous interest in gaming. Gaming is the media that will drive them, instead of television.''
Given the social and interactive nature of today's video games combined with the growing number of people with broadband connection, is it any surprise that such games are getting popular here? Given the choice between spending another Friday night battling the crowd at the mall, I'll be home fighting the Horde. I'll see some of you there.
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