How to publish, localise, and develop games in MENA - Sohaib Thiab from Tamatem

I am now joined by Sohab the chief product officer for Tamatam. How are you doing today?
I'm good, James. Thank you. How are you?
I'm good. I'm good. I'm fortunately not in Jordan at the moment or Akaba. It's a it's a shame. I'm usually at these events, but this year uh we're doing things slightly differently. As a result, I am doing tech support from back in the UK, which means we're doing this a little bit before the start of the show, but uh luckily we get a chance to chat and that's the most important thing.
Um I always ask everybody when we start these things in case they don't know what the company is all about. So in this case, what is Tomatum? What do you folks do?
Yeah. So Tomatum is one of the biggest publishers in the uh in the media region of games. Uh we've been we've been publishing games for the past 12 years.
Gotcha. And I understand that in one capacity or another you've been with the company since its inception. I know you've done different things and you've

been in the Netherlands for a while and you've recently recently come back.
Yeah. So I've I've my history with Tomatim goes in the back to its inception days. Uh I've actually been in the gaming industry in 2008. I co-founded a gaming company called Wizards Productions before Tomatam. That's also what was with the with Hassan Ham the CEO of Tomatam. So we both started a gaming company prior to Tomatum that lasted for about four years and then we pivoted into game publishing after that company and we established Tomato together. I was uh I was there at the inception and then I decided to step out of the gaming industry in a full-time capacity. I worked in multiple other industries before deciding to go back to Jordan uh and back into gaming with Tamatam uh about four months ago. So I joined Tomatin back in in in July of uh uh of this year as their chief product officer.
Fantastic. Returning home. So you've effectively been back and forth and you've done some self-loization, if you will. Uh which is which is one thing we

always talk about when we're moving between the different regions. We take the conference all over the world. So we're always curious how do games fare? How are they released? How does the audience react? What are the cultural differences in every area? And in the case of the mayor region, we talked to lots of people who want to, you know, release games in multiple places. And sometimes, and I've said this many, many times, they think, "Fantastic, we'll run it through Google Translate or in this case, you know, an AI translator and say, "Right, that's it. Job done." And then are surprised when it doesn't work or doesn't take off for any number of reasons. What are in your opinion the biggest misconceptions about localizing games in the main region? What do people get wrong?
Yeah, so indeed very good points. Like I think it's not surprising that some companies or people approach it in the that simplistic approach as you said like hey you know it's text we translated using Google translate or now with AI and that's that's job done and that may work for some uh languages right so to to to be fair and I think for but in the case of the Arabic

languages specifically there are a few different aspects that you need to be aware of as well so uh first of all the language isn't simple right? Like uh the Arabic language cons in in conservative conservative estimates it's about 15 million words. If you Google it, you'll probably find that it's it's a language of more than 30 million words. And in some cases it's not uh there is no limit to uh uh the the number of words that Arabic language can support. And then there's also all of the cultural aspects, right? So uh uh uh even if you do get the translation correctly uh there's different dialects and there is also the cultural aspects of uh what is suitable uh uh from that perspective. So uh do you want to take it to the next level where you want to localize some of those game concepts right? So for example you know the use of alcohol for example in certain area are areas of the region is frowned upon is not allowed uh culturally it's not it's not something

that you would like you would want to have in your game because people will not will not like like to see that. So we take the uh uh the launch of the Arabic version of that uh uh uh game uh down to those details, right? And you'll see published games that are produced within the region and you know if you go ahead over on to in our case Google Play, but other app stores are available in the main region of course. What are the types of games that do prove popular over there? because I noticed there are some genres that don't pop up as much and then there are some things where for example in the west there's lots of um poker style games whereas I notice in the main region there's a popularity of like the VIP series where it's got lots of tabletop style games that people gather to play together and they've they've been digitized what does work in in the in the region so typically indeed like a good examples that you mentioned already there right so indeed like poker games or other types of games uh similar to poker don't do well also because it's a it's a it's a religious topic, right? But other games do extremely well that are social games. So you mentioned the

VIP games. Indeed, we have a a number of hit games that that work extremely well like Belvelute, VIP Belute or VIP Jelat like there. So card multiplayer social games typically do well because they also do well offline. So these are the types of games that people, you know, gather around from any in a family context or, you know, when you go out with your friends. social games, RP role playinging games, multiplayer strategy games also do extremely well in the region and they also do well for other uh developers or publishers as well.
Yeah, I did notice actually when I was looking through the the list that you've you've made some a shift recently where you published there was an anime RPG. I think it's called Land of Heroes that that appeared and I that stuck out to me. It's like that's actually not something I see a lot of in the region and it feels like something like a a bold swing now. Is that something where you're noticing tastes are shifting that there there is now room for this kind of thing in the area or is it more like a toe in the water? Let's see how how folks react.
So that one like the land of views is a

very interesting one because indeed it was it's an anime RPG game. Um and for us this this wasn't a big it was definitely something that we sort of like a toe in the water as you expressed it but at the same time we know that there were there's a massive anime following in the region as well
right
uh uh so uh we did lots of testing uh obviously before we took on the game it's al so so coming up from a from a strong developer and it's a strong game that did extremely well globally so it wasn't much of experiment there. It was more of realizing that there is an interesting uh already an appetite to follow anime series in the region and it was just can can that would that audience be interested in an anime game and it it work out. Yeah.
Do you think there are still areas within the uh that that particular area of the industry where gamers or consumers are being underserved? So

whether it's genres or or the quality or payment processing or just or choice, do you think there are places where it's like we've got this covered, we've got this covered, there's plenty of these games, there's still this area that people are crying out for. Why isn't there this type of game or or this type of option?
Yeah. So I think uh payment options is definitely one area that we definitely believe that there is an underserving of. Okay. uh especially for customers that uh don't are unbanked, don't have the ability to add a credit card yet to their app store uh or don't want to for whatever reason. So that's definitely an area and that's where we've invested and and built Tamatan Plus which is our alternative payment method platform. Uh we developed it for our own games initially and then started to offer it to partners as well. Uh so that that allows customers to pay with alternative payment methods. I think people certainly in the west that surprises them. I speak to a lot of people and if people aren't familiar they don't realize that like there's huge chunks of

the main reasonian society where it's it's not card based. It's not credit card based. It's it's based in other payment methods and therefore you can't just use Google Play or whatever and and you're away. And I think that catches some people in the west off guard because it's just sort of standard standard operating procedure here. So that's really interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. 100% and I completely uh relate to that and understand it as as you mentioned like I was somebody that lived in the in Europe for a for a number of years and I completely understand why they're surprised. It's just a sort of like a standard way of thinking. Customers even in countries advanced let's say quote unquote advanced countries where there is credit card penetration typically users have a credit card in their wallet but they still prefer to pay through the local payment method that's connected to their bank. They trust it more. It's faster. They see the transaction immediately in their bank transaction. They don't have to wait for it for a few days to see it or to realize. So there is a level of comfort uh using the local payment method.
And in addition to the publishing,

you've recently put your foot into the waters of development as well. Is that right? You haven't released anything yet, but you are working on it for the past past couple of years. What's that been like and and what kind of things are you working on if you can say?
Yeah. Yeah. So, so indeed uh we've sort of like started as I mentioned like we uh uh me and Husam when we started in the gaming industry we started as developers even before Tamatan. So we started developing our own games back then they were browser based games
uh before even mobile app platform. So this was in 2008. So we we we're passionate about building games. That's how and that's how we started and we as I mentioned at the beginning of the of the interview we we pivoted into mobile publishing and that has done us done extremely well. It is still our core business
and will probably remained as our core business for a long time. But we also realized that we need to be able to develop our own games as well for strategic purposes as well. So uh that's why a couple of years ago Tamat started

to develop its own games as you mentioned. Uh we are working on on two games right now.
Um one is a let's say is a remake of a an existing game that Tom did uh uh developed at the at its early days. Uh it's a it's a second version of of that game. It's a basically it's a it's a game that is based on a character that is extremely well known in in in Jordan. Uh it's a charact carto cartoonish character. Um so it's a it's a driving game, car driving game where you're you have a mission. Uh it's a single player car driving game. I won't say more or reveal more, but it's it's it's a it's something. It's a car race car driving game. There will be in pocket game and akaba a demo of that game. Uh
excellent. And I'm going to miss it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the so the game is set to soft launch at the um at the end of this year and there's another

uh platform game uh around card games that is also being developed in house.
Um so yeah uh we are getting into it but as I said it's something that we we're building a small studio. Uh we're working in those two games as our first two games. Um but publishing obviously is the core business and will will continue to be to to be the case for for a number of years
and looking into 2025 the end of it and 2026. So you you've got the games development going going on in the background there. Are there other things that from the publishing side that you're looking forward to or do you have games in the in the pipe ready to to go? Are you on the lookout for additional things? Should people be approaching you? What's what's happening into next year?
Yeah. So definitely and on top of in indeed investing and building the studio, we're we're continuing to publish more games. Um so we have a a game that we actually just launched. It's beta uh phase just a couple of weeks ago. It's called Call of Sparta. Uh it's another MMO RPG strategy game.

Uh and there's another game that is also set to launch in Q1 uh of next year. Uh that is also a published game. So, we're we're definitely looking to expand our publishing uh operations, publish a number of games next year, and we're definitely looking forward to to uh uh work with other developers, new developers to launch more games uh in 2026 and 27.
Well, with any luck, next year I'll be back in the back in the country to physically have a go at some of them. But, uh in the meantime, best of luck with 2026. And so, thank you for talking to me today.
Thank you, James. A pleasure talking to you and yeah, looking forward to seeing you uh next time.
Likewise.