Virtual adventure

Hundreds of thousands of players across Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar,Bahrain, Jordan, and Europe are participating in Nokia Game 2001, a global virtual adventure which kicked off last week.

During the three-week event, players across 28 countries will receive clues via different media including newspapers, TV, radio, SMS messages, short movies, websites, emails and phone calls.
Their challenge is to solve each clue, gathering enough points to move onto the next stage. No players will be eliminated in the early rounds, but as the plot thickens, some players may find themselves eliminated from the global challenge.

Eddie Maalouf, marketing manager, Nokia Middle East, said, "After months of preparations, players across the globe are now competing to solve clues that have been scheduled to drop across different media in different countries in real time."

The players will receive cryptic messages that they need to solve in order to move on to the next stage. The global Chief GameMaster team in Amsterdam will monitor their progress and ensure that all is working well.

Sixteen GameMasters and the Local Chief GameMaster, all based in the UAE, offer network support by providing daily online updates and answering online queries from regional players.

The local team, headquartered in the American University of Dubai's (AUD) computer laboratories, reports to the International Chief GameMaster, 21-year-old Khaled Abou Nader, another AUD student based at the global headquarters in Amsterdam, along with other Chief GameMasters from the rest of the globe.

Abou Nader provides localised daily updates and coordinating feeldback between the global control centre in Amsterdam and the regional base in Dubai. He is assisted by 16 IT students, working on two shifts during the game period at the AUD control room as local GameMasters, each monitoring a capacity of 25,000 players from the seven participating countries from across the region.

The local Chief GameMaster, 20-year-old Chicco Hiranandani, is overseeing operations, solving problems that Middle East players might encounter by communicating via e-mail directly to them from Dubai.

The top 10 players of each Middle East country will each win a Nokia 5510 mobile phone, designed specifically for mobile entertainment and featuring a digital music player, stereo FM radio, games, and advanced messaging capabilities.