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Why is the Middle East and the consortium so concerned about esports and gaming? Yalla Group, a leading social and gaming company in the Middle East with its "social + games", has made important progress in medium and heavy games.
Ronaldo is far from the ceiling! After stirring up world football, the Middle East is keen to pay attention to esports and games
1. Stir up world football! The Middle East loves sports
The wealth of the Middle East has always been known all over the world. Its attention to sports competition, especially football, in recent years has directly stirred up the development and changes of world football.
The 2022 Qatar World Cup, for the first time in history, brought the grand event of football not only to the Middle East, but also to the winter for the first time. And after an unforgettable month, the Middle East's football craze did not stop, on the contrary, the pace of expansion began further - the world's most fan-following footballer and four-time Ballon d'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo announced that he would join a Middle Eastern team with the highest annual salary in history, Riyadh Victory from Saudi Arabia.
Following Ronaldo's arrival at Riyadh Victory, world football stars have joined the Saudi league, including Ballon d'Or winner Benzema. The Middle East has proved and demonstrated to the world the love and desire for sport.
2. Middle East: I love esports too! Dubai Esports and Games Festival inaugurates
On June 21, the second Dubai Esports & Games Festival 2023 (DEF 2023) officially opened in Dubai Expo City. For 5 consecutive days, DEF 2023 brought a series of exciting events such as industry summits, esports events, and game expos, building a unique communication platform for gamers, investors, entrepreneurs and esports players around the world.
It is worth noting that this Dubai Esports and Games Festival was held under the patronage of Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Second Vice Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Media Council. This also shows the common focus and hope of local official and private consortiums in the Middle East for gaming and e-sports.
In addition to the excitement of the venue, Rosky also noted that the Game Expo Summit is one of the most important events of DEF 2023. The summit featured a rich agenda, including a Global Trends Panel, a MENA Trends Panel, and discussions on Dubai as an esports destination and esports innovation, bringing together more than 1,000 industry-leading professionals. These included DET Strategy Advisor Dr. Marwan Zarunyi, Dubai Culture CEO Syed Kalbash and Dubai Sports Commission Director of Sports Development Khalid Avar, among others, to discuss the development of the regional gaming industry.
DEF 2023 is a great event for the whole Middle East and the Middle East in particular.
More than just voice social, gaming is gradually becoming the second growth curve for this Middle Eastern tech unicorn
1. Debut at the Dubai Esports and Games Festival
Rosky noted that Yalla Group, the largest local online social and gaming company in the Middle East and North Africa, was unveiled at the conference with Age of Legends and Merge Kingdoms.
And delivered a keynote speech at the GameExpo Summit at DEF 2023, sharing the company's thinking on the future development path of mobile games.
At the same time, in the exclusive exhibition area of Yalla Group at the exhibition site, the fierce offensive and defensive battle of Yalla Group games on the display firmly captured the attention of the audience, allowing everyone to applaud and cheer along with the progress of the game. There was also a long queue of players who wanted to experience the new game developed by Yalla Group for themselves.
2. Grasp the attributes of "social + game", Yalla Group continues to enrich the product matrix
Looking back at the history of Yalla Group, its first product, Yalla, launched in 2016, is also the first voice social application in the Middle East and North Africa. The launch of Yalla allows local users to conduct their traditional social activities online anytime, anywhere, and the extremely localized product design has been warmly sought after and welcomed by users, and has also allowed Yalla Group to gain a firm foothold in the Middle Eastern chat market. In the past two years, Yalla Group has continuously improved the layout of social products and successively launched products such as YallaChat.
In 2018, Yalla Group began to focus on lightweight games. The launch of Yalla Ludo is the first Ludo app of its kind to add voice chat and chat room functionality within the app, and has long topped the MENA board and home games charts. Yalla Ludo's success further validates Yalla Group's R&D strength and localization capabilities, and with Yalla Ludo's successful experience, it continues to expand its casual game matrix, launching Yalla Parchis, Yalla Baloot and 101 Okey Yalla.
Medium to heavy: Yalla Group threw two blockbuster new games
1. Strive for the development and distribution of medium and heavy games
It is worth noting that in 2021, Yalla Group established a holding subsidiary, Yalla Game, to focus on the research and development and distribution of medium and heavy games. In terms of research and development, in the second quarter of this year, as a result of the new stage, the new medium and heavy mobile games "Age of Legends" and "Merge Kingdoms" were officially launched; In terms of distribution, Yalla Game is actively seeking cooperation with global premium content vendors to leverage its strong localization capabilities to provide strategic support in product design, game operations and user acquisition.
Yang Tao, founder, chairman and CEO of Yalla Group, synchronized the important progress of the game business to the outside world when the company released its financial report for the first quarter of 2023, "In May this year, Yalla Game's first self-developed heavy mobile game Age of Legends was officially launched. This is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game specially designed according to the preferences, culture and usage habits of users in the MENA region. ”
Through this financial report, Rosky also noted that Yalla Group's game business revenue is constantly improving, with a year-on-year increase of 13.6% in the first quarter of this year and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 9.5%; At the same time, the proportion of game business in total revenue has continued to increase, and has exceeded the 30% threshold.
2. Two new games that make the audience unable to walk away
At this DEF, the live game competition and fierce offensive and defensive battle of "Age of Legends" and "Merge Kingdoms" in the exclusive exhibition area of Yalla Group led to a wave of live effects. Let's take a brief look at these two games -
《Age of Legends》
This is Yalla Game's first self-developed MMORPG mobile game, which was first launched in Turkey in May 2023 and has repeatedly ranked among the top 10 of the Turkish Google App Store role-playing game download list and best-selling list.
Age of Legends adopts a realistic and magical art style to create a large map with rich scenes and diverse terrain, providing users with a highly immersive real-world experience. Users can not only choose a variety of positioning, but also use a personalized dressing system to choose a variety of weapons and clothing appearances, and customize more personal images. The game is equipped with a high-freedom combat system, and the gameplay also integrates light hang-up gameplay, which can meet the requirements of light fragmentation and small server ecology, and also lays single-server to cross-server PVP gameplay.
Swipe left and right to see more
《Merge Kingdoms》
Launched in June 2023, this is a stylized cartoon, vertical screen turn combat SLG+ synthesis game, in which mild SLG is the core gameplay and Merge is the secondary gameplay. The game includes inner city exploration, famous city battles, diversified characteristic heroes, mythical beast system, expedition placement system, large map wild bosses and other special gameplay, as well as one-click synthesis of soldiers and buildings.
Swipe left and right to see more
Facing the future: Why is the Middle East and the consortium so focused on esports and gaming?
Through the success of the Dubai Esports and Games Festival, the Middle East has further demonstrated to the world its attention and love for esports and gaming.
So why is the Middle East and the consortium so concerned about esports and gaming?
This is because: once relying on oil for wealth, the Middle East in the new era urgently needs a new round of industrial upgrading. And the layout of sports competition is an important path. Looking around the world, we will find that the major sports leagues in Europe and North America have the presence of Middle Eastern consortiums. Aiming at games and e-sports can be described as a more long-term, future-oriented inevitable layout. Rosky believes there are several key reasons -
1. E-sports is a rigid demand, and it is a new form of competition that may surpass the coverage of football. E-sports has been selected for the performance program of the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, and in recent years, the call for esports to enter the Olympic Games has also been constantly ringing. In the final analysis, it can only be said that the popularity of games and esports is currently beyond the existence of any sports competition, and it is a key track that will continue to generate appeal. In order to expand the audience, the number of teams participating in the next World Cup has also increased to 48; Games and esports, on the other hand, are naturally direct, deep, and comprehensive penetration for the next generation and future audiences, and this trend will only become more and more obvious.
2. Social and entertainment are the needs of local people, and they are also the key links between local people and the world. As we all know, the Middle East is one of the most sensitive core areas in the world. The people of the Middle East are eager to integrate into the world, and they very much want the world to truly understand the Middle East. Unlike previous consortiums that scattered money in foreign countries, Ronaldo came to Saudi Arabia to further focus the world on the local understanding of the Middle East and penetrate deep into the Middle East. Games and social networking are on a larger scale and in the most advanced and fashionable form, bringing a full range of people-to-people communication and interaction. This is crucial for the Middle East's link with the world.
3. A key shift from "blood transfusion for foreign countries" to "hematopoiesis for locality". Neither football nor the esports and gaming industry can succeed by buying and buying alone. The author understands that the Middle East has long been planning and laying out for the future. For example, in 2016, Saudi Arabia set the "Vision 2030" plan, which not only included increasing employment opportunities for young people, but also made a new plan for the development of the country's sports industry and economic and cultural modernization. In 2022, Saudi Arabia announced gaming and esports as a national development strategy, and Savvy Games Group (SGG), an esports and gaming company owned by Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF, announced a US$37.8 billion investment plan. Rosky believes that esports and games are more cultural and have more opportunities to be initiated locally than other industries. The key is to have products that are close to the local area, future-oriented and world-oriented, and strong capital for long-term support.
Entertain, explore, communicate, interact... Whether players or practitioners, DEF 2023 is full of unforgettable excitement in the gaming market. The success of this festival not only reaffirms the Middle East's focus on innovation, entertainment and esports development, but also soundses the clarion call for the battlefield of the future. It remains to be seen what impact and changes the new wave of heavy mobile game innovation in this region led by Yalla Group will bring.