Serious about games

Regional gaming startups now have a champion in the form of MEGAplay — the Middle East Gaming Alliance, an organization dedicated to nurturing regional gaming startups. The launch was announced Tuesday by David Munir Nabti, CEO of Lebanese startup space AltCity. Choosing the afternoon of the first day of ArabNet Digital Summit 2014 in Dubai to unveil the new group, Nabti explains that MEGAplay is an initiative to help Middle Eastern startups take advantage of the appetite for games in the Middle East. “Gaming is a huge sector regionally, but startups are not tapping into that,” he says. Nabti announced that MEGAplay will provide various support to gaming startups. It will offer workshops — both online and offline — using expert know-how to put regional companies on a more competitive footing in a global market worth perhaps $70 billion. The idea is “to help people start games [and] develop new concepts that are