The rules of the game

By Amira Howeidy
It's not the Egyptian version of Playstation, nor do its creators promote it as such. But el3ab.com (el'ab means play in Arabic) is the first free all-games Web site featuring Egyptian favourites from tawla (a version of backgammon) to popular card games komi, tarnib and Estimation. el3ab.com, which is owned by IT Worx, a software development and consulting firm, released its beta version of the four games last week on the eve of Eid, targeting thousands of teenagers on holiday and on-line. Outside the holiday rush, however, its creators believe the site could attract up to 15,000 visitors a day.
This claim seems somewhat surprising, given that no announcement, advertisements or newsletter informed potential users that the site was about to launch. Unless you know someone who works at el3ab.com or have heard about it through the Web vine, you wouldn't even know it existed. According to el3ab.com project manager Ahmed Badr, however, the complete lack of advertising is deliberate. "We're quite happy with the technology and the quality of our games and we tested them thoroughly. But we still don't know what it will be like if say, 1,000 people are playing at the same time," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. At the time of writing, the site was getting only 400 hits a day.
IT Worx, established in 1995 and owned by Youssri Helmi and Wael Amin, began by developing software for clients in Canada then expanded to a consulting firm focusing on the design and development of eSolutions and net-enabling technologies for large enterprises as well as dotcoms. According to Badr, the company is interested in "penetrating new markets," which is why it decided to develop on-line gaming. "There is no gaming site in the Middle East that caters to the Arabs. True, many sites either feature games or are devoted exclusively to games. You'll find backgammon, but it's still different from what we call tawla," he explained. Although there are competitors in the field, like masrawy.com, which recently added two games (tawla and connect4) to its Yahoo!-like Web site, Badr is confident that el3ab.com "is well ahead for the time being, in the quality of our games." Indeed, a variety of options allow players to adapt the games to their tastes. Unlike masrawy.com, furthermore, el3ab.com's users are not limited to interaction with other on-line gamers; they have the option of playing against the computer.
When IT Worx bought the country's first on-line delivery service, otlob.com, last year and turned it into something of a success story, speculation was rife as to the company's plans for on-line expansion. Ownership of otlob and el3ab means that a large share of Egypt's 300,000 Internet users will be visiting the site to play or order food. When they do, otlob offers benefits designed to keep them coming back: besides the 10 per cent discount on products they buy from the site, users don't pay on-line -- the use of credit cards is still very limited in Egypt, and IT Worx knows on-line payment is unpopular here. Instead, visitors to otlob.com hand over the cash when they receive the delivery.
As for el3ab.com, although there are no available statistics indicating the reasons why Egyptians buy computers, Badr believes approximately 50,000 PC owners basically "want to play games and chat on-line." He dismissed rumours of a possible merger between the two sites, however, asserting that they "will remain separate."
Since playing on el3ab.com is free, its creators hope that hosting advertisements and licensing their gaming technology will bring in revenue. Says Badr: "The main idea is to develop games, chatting and instant messaging for other Web sites that might want to add them. We can customise the look and feel of our site to suit others."
The ultimate goal? "That anyone in the Middle East who plays games, will go to el3ab.com. At this stage, that isn't happening. But what we're doing is market penetration. We want part of the market to come and play on our site, especially young people aged 15 to 20, because that is the age group that plays tarnib and Estimation. To increase traffic on el3ab.com, we'll simply add more games, such as dominoes and more variants of tawla." The next step is to include games that are popular in other countries in the Middle East.
Although gaming hardware is "still an option," el3ab.com is more interested in keeping the games on-line only. "The whole idea is to get dynamic. We want people to visit the site. What makes a good site is the number of visitors. If I put the game on CD, why should people want to go to the Web site?"
Yet el3ab.com's greatest achievement may be the domain name itself. Developing e-mail shorthand to suit its own "third language" of communication, the Arabic-speaking web community substitutes numbers -- like 3 and 7 -- for letters such as 'ayn and hah. Badr explains: "We're addressing the Middle East, and although the site is bilingual (English and Arabic), we are specifically targeting users in this part of the world. The '3' and '7' are characters that are recognised by the vast majority of Arab users."
The Internet is still dominated by the English language, and will remain so in the foreseeable future. But by catering to a specific cultural grouping -- whether through games popular among Arab users, or the adoption of a domain name visitors will instantly recognise as Arabic -- el3ab.com and other sites like it are bound to help create new rules on the world wide Web.
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