LEAP 2025

As Saudi’s NGES aims to be the “Center of the Game” Spoilz is leveling up the mobile-games sector and unlocking career opportunities, backed by Impact46 and strategic investors. Spoilz is set to expand its development and growth locally and regionally by promoting Saudi and Arabic culture IPs.

Spoilz aligns with Saudi Vision 2030’s objectives to enhance quality of life and unlock promising sectors that offer new economic opportunities. It aims to solidify the Kingdom’s position as a leading mobile-game destination while delivering economic impact. This initiative is a key component of the National Gaming and Esports Strategy, which aims to generate economic contributions of up to SAR 50 billion by 2030.

Spoilz, a Saudi mobile gaming company founded by CEO Musab Almalki and Lean node venture builder in 2020, has secured a strategic investment round led by Impact46 with additional backing from Strategic Investors. The capital will accelerate development of new IPs, uplift local talents, and refine the players engagement and monetization. 

This investment comes as part of the National Development Fund’s (NDF) ongoing efforts to foster innovation and accelerate growth in Saudi Arabia’s e-gaming industry, overseen by NDF in collaboration with the Social Development Bank and the Saudi Esports Federation. As part of its broader mandate, NDF oversees an integrated development finance ecosystem that supports key sectors, including gaming and e-sports. By fostering strategic collaborations, NDF strengthens the sector’s growth and positions the Kingdom as a regional leader in gaming & e-sport economic development, aligning with Saudi Vision 2030.

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With the support of Impact46 and our investors, we are taking Spoilz to the next level, building games that not only entertain millions worldwide but also create real opportunities for local talents to thrive. Saudi Arabia has immense potential in the gaming industry, and this investment enables us to contribute directly to its growth.

Musab Almalki, Spoilz CEO

Spoilz is led by a team with 90+ years of combined experience working at billion-dollar companies like King and Zynga, behind hit games such as Candy Crush and Farmville 2. Engaging 2 million players globally, Spoilz has topped the App Store charts in 6 countries and ranked in the Top Free Words & Family in 10 countries with its “Last Letter” IP. The company has also participated in leading accelerators like Misk Accelerator, inspireU, and MCIT’s Saudi Game Champions.

With the plan of 2025 to launch new IPs with key partnerships and Introduction of new gaming technology and talent development. The investment will be deployed in Spoilz’s mission to create world-class mobile games and foster the next generation of Saudi-based developers, designers, and industry professionals.

Look for further updates and new game launches in the coming months as Spoilz uses this investment to drive growth and innovation, visit spoilz.gg or email info@match3yigu.pro

The post From Riyadh to the Global Stage appeared first on Spoilz.

What to expect from your very first game

Nothing much, if you made a cube that jumps around then you should congratulate yourself for your amazing achievement, and I mean it!

but I want to make my DREAM GAME (you might think to yourself), it has to have the big red robot that I need to shoot down in order to save the space princess from the evil king carzella, sure thing! This carzella thing might be great and everything but here’s the point you’re messing, nearly every game idea sounds 10 times more fun than what it actually is, so this is why game devs and designers prototype their ideas first before considering putting them into their games. Anyway, your very first game shouldn’t be your dream game at all because of the nature of the tools you are dealing with and their learning curves, game engines, 3d software, digital audio workstations, and don’t forget your coding IDEs, these are some of the tools you might need to learn in order to make your game, but even if you don’t need any of them, say you’re making a real-life board game, it’s highly encouraged to try and test things out, be playful with your approach, create small bite-sized games, with each focusing on one mechanic. This is the best way to learn how to use the tools with your hands.

Keep it small

And I mean really really tiny, think of the smallest thing you can make and then divide it by 20, go and take one of these bits and make it your game, 

(But why?) you might be asking yourself, here’s a small story to help you understand what you are dealing with, let’s say you asked your roommate (let’s call him joe) to bring you some water, he nods in agreement, goes for a minute and return with empty (yet wet hands) saying -here you go-  you raise your eyebrows and ask him where’s the water? And he replies -here it is, in my hands- 

This joe is your game, modern software has gone through a lot just to meet people’s expectations of what it means to work as we expect it to, but that’s not the case for your game (and programming in general) just like with your roommate joe, unless you specify that you want the water in a cup he will try to bring it in his hands, which doesn’t work unfortunately, now imagine asking the same joe to buy you a bag of chips from the shop across the street, how many things can you account for in his journey to the store and back from it, he might just jump out of the window if you didn’t specifically say that he needs to use the stairs, and don’t get me started on how is he going to cross the street, long story short, the bigger your game the more things you need to account for, that’s why it’s generally better to keep it small.

It’s okay to take your time

Game development is a skill, and just like any skill it needs time to learn and master, so don’t worry about your dream game, you will make it eventually just you have to learn how to utilize the tools within your reach to the best of your ability, if you want more practical guides on how you can become a game developer, there are roadmaps online, so don’t be afraid to follow them, and remember, have fun!

The post Why your first game won’t be your dream game appeared first on Spoilz.

Game ads in the feature phones age: 

Back in the mid-2000s mobile games ads consisted mostly of pictures you can see on websites or Print ads that have a phone’s screen in one of the corners to showcase what the game actually looks like.

an ad for The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion

An ad for DOOM RPG

An ad for Assassins Creed 1

Very few companies tried to make a trailer for their mobile games, but of course, there were some notable exceptions like the Rovio (you might know them from angry birds), and FromSoftware (and yes I mean the dark souls FromSoftware).

Rovio Mobile – Darkest Fear 3:

Armored Core Mobile 3

In the early smartphones era (late 2008) more companies started experimenting with the idea of trailers for mobile games, some notable mentions for these ads/ trailers are from companies are, THQ wireless, EA (again), and Gameloft, with the last releasing a cinematic trailer for its hack n slash game hero of Sparta.

THQ Wireless – Saints Row 2 for mobile

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Mobile Trailer

MOBILE EA SPORTS NASCAR® 09

Hero of Sparta – Cinematic trailer by Gameloft

Games ads in the early smartphones era:

With the announcement of the very first iPhone in 2007, came a new era for mobile devices, however, game companies didn’t take it too seriously up until 2009, it was when every company had to release a game on the system, the games ranged from upgraded versions of java games with fancy 3D graphics, or a terrible (maybe too ambitious) mobile port of a famous franchise, in the other hand releasing trailers for java games has become a stable at that point and every major company was doing it, especially if the game was a part of bigger franchises.

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010 – Trailer

Driver – iPhone / iPod touch trailer by Gameloft

Assassin’s Creed II – Mobile game trailer

The rise of casual games: 

pretty much after and for a while (specifically the years from 2009 till 2016) things were normal for mobile games ads, the ads consisted of normal gameplay or sometimes a live-action scene to promote the game, most noticeable ads from this era are Clash Of Clans and Lord mobile ads and I want to highlight the super ball add for clash of clans here because it was considered one of the best in that season (side note: I don’t understand why would anyone unlist such a great ad)

The rise of “terrible mobile ads”

In 2016 Lords mobile made a huge campaign on every platform you could think of, which is normal for any big game but the key difference was the creatives they used, the ads featured a heavily scripted sense of alleged players reacting to prerendered footage of the game, what’s noticeable about the whole thing is that the terrible level of acting, I’ll let you be the judge here.

Ever since then, companies realized that they can post these types of ads and get the results they want + people would generally make videos about these ads which would amount to more people getting curious about the game and trying it, so the ads only kept getting weirder.

are weird ads new phenomena?:

Weird ads aren’t new by themselves, we can go back as far as the late ’80s and we would find weird ads, and a great example of this is Sega’s Genesis and its famous campaign (Genesis does what Nintendon’t)

SEGA Genesis Commercials – Genesis does what Nintendon’t!

Sega isn’t alone in this, both Nintendo, sony, and Microsoft had weird ads, What’s the best way to highlight that you can control Kerby with your finger? Of course, having a giant finger that hangs out with kerby  

Kirby Canvas Curse Commercial

This ad’s title is the only description it needs (life is short)

Life is Short (Original Xbox advert banned)

This ad showcases the old vs the new type of (toys) in a mysterious (and low-key creepy) way

PS3 Baby commercial

The rise of hyper-casual games:

Hyper casual games (by design) are easy to pick up and appeal to the widest audience possible, the target audience for this genre is usually anyone with a mobile phone, and it usually tops the charts, especially free games, all these elements made the hyper-casual scene one of the most difficult to pierce through especially when it comes to players acquisition, so once hyper casual publishers know they have an easy to pick up and an addicting game, they would do anything possible to get the player to just download it, and then trust that the game would take it from there, this resulted in a verity of user acquisition methods and (of course) a verity of weird ads.

Casual games catching up:

Casual games took notice of what hyper-casual games are doing and decided to do the same, and since casual games usually have bigger budgets for marketing, this resulted in a lot, and I mean A LOT of CG (computer graphics) ads, there are too many of them to count but I highlighted some of the noticeable types.

Pull the pin ads:

I don’t know what’s so captivating about this type of puzzle game but it is really common in ads for some reason

The (oh the misery) ads:

This type provides a sad scenario that encourages the viewer to engage and help the character in distress

The numbers game ads: 

These ads heavily feature dealing with numbers, either subtracting adding dividing, or multiplying you name it.

Monster Room Maze game ads ‘1’

Fishdom game ads shorts ’58’ Stone Break Make way survival

The weird scenarios ads:

This type of ad is my favorite, the way it works is by providing a totally fictional scenario that would evolve to weird conclusions, and it usually ends on a cliff hanger so you would want to play the game yourself just to know what’s going on.

Garden Affairs game ads ’15’ tragic story of big sister

Lily’s Garden – Wait, Lily faked it?!

The oversexualized ads:

I’m not going to provide examples for this type but I wanted to say that it exists, and it’s probably one the most overused types of ads, I hope it disappears but I’m sure it won’t as long as it is working.

The fake gaming ads (commentary and gameplay)

This type features either fake gameplay from other games or someone acting like they are giving commentary over their gameplay.

Fake commentary:

https://youtu.be/V7k5slpzj5Q

Fake gameplay:

Challenging the player ads:

The whole point of this type is to make the viewer feel challenged so it would play the game by presenting a high-level gameplay and then saying that only a selected few would be able to reach it, or by playing in the worst way possible that it would make the viewer angry and frustrated they would install the game just to do it themselves and winning.

@spoilzgames

Can you save him?

♬ original sound – Spoilz Games – Spoilz |  سپويلز

What makes an ad good:

 it depends on whom you might ask but generally, if it does its job then it is good, however, if you asked me personally, I would say that ads that contain a good message are the best type, other than that I prefer the ads that stick to the product and showcases what’s great about it instead of click-baiting or misleading the viewer.

The post How mobile game ads become weird? appeared first on Spoilz.

Last week, Apex Legends Mobile players were met with three notifications from the developers that all carried the same message:

“We are saddened to announce that we have made the difficult decision to sunset Apex Legends Mobile. Factors beyond our control prevented us from maintaining the high-quality experience that our players deserve. As a result, the game will sunset on May 1, 2023, at 4 pm PDT after which it will no longer be playable. You are encouraged to spend the remaining Syndicate Gold and make use of in-game items before the game is taken offline. In support, we will be launching additional in-game events in the weeks ahead. -Respawn”
To put it shortly, the game’s servers will be shut down on May 1st, don’t make any purchases and if you have left currency make sure to spend it.

The chaotic aftermath:

I was lucky enough (or unlucky if you wanted to think about it like that) to be there when they dropped the news on the unexpecting players, the chat (understandably) went berserk, Some were angry because the hard-earned money they spent on the game suddenly felt wasted, and asked for a refund, some were trying to make a hashtag to protest against the game’s closing, and some were sad either because they have just entered the game and they are feeling like they missed out or just because the fact that it’s closing. 

The sad reality:

Live service games shutting down isn’t a new thing in the industry, video games are (in the end) a business, and the major drive for business is profits, in the case of multiplayer games you have the ongoing cost of running and maintaining servers for players from around the world, and if the costs exceed the profits or even if the gains didn’t stand up to the publisher’s expectations the games usually get shut down.

Other games across the industry:

Aside from Apex legends mobile, there are several other games that are shutting down this year, including:

1. Rumbleverse 28th of Feb 2023
2. Knockout city 6th of Jun 2023
3. Echo VR First of Aug 2023
4. Crossfire X 18th of May 2023

What to do if your favorite game is closing?

There’s not much to do about this case, back in the day (and under some exceptional circumstances) players would be able to make custom servers for their favorite games, or host gameplay sessions if the game supports a P2P (peer-to-peer) type of connection which allows direct connection between players by making one of them act as a server and the other’s would be its clients but it’s not that common these days due to the nature of always online games and the anti-cheat systems, my best advice is to enjoy it while it lasts because nothing lasts forever,  soon you would find a new favorite game for you and life would move on, and please, don’t attack/ harass anyone linked to your game, believe me when I say that devs are sadder than anyone when it comes to this type of news because it’s the fruit of their labor, and it was a journey for them as much as it was for you, but if they can move on, so can you.

Sources:

Servers picture

10 games that are shutting down permanently in 2023

EA and Meta weren’t the only companies to ax games this week

The post Why live service games shut down? appeared first on Spoilz.

It stands for artificial intelligence and depending on how you look at it, it could range from NPC’s behaviors in games to matching people with the same playstyles together in online games

How it started:

Many think that the implementation of AI in video games is something relatively recent, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, the 1972 game “pong” (and yeah I mean this pong) was allegedly recognized as the first game ever to feature artificial intelligence when it allowed its players to face the computer instead of a human opponent, the game was so revolutionary it made people think the machine was actually able to think for itself, of course, that wasn’t the case. It will never be like that, games, after all, are smokes and mirrors, the trick is to make it believable just enough.

The current appliance of AI (real life and games)

Nowadays, AI is everywhere, from your car,  your GPU and CPU, to even your smartphone, it helps in various tasks like semi to full auto driving, to getting more FPS in games due to better methods of AA (anti-aliasing) and taking better pictures through your smartphone camera, in video games world, AI has enabled games to have an amazing level of depth when it comes to interacting with NPCs (non-player characters), also it helped immensely with fighting cheating in multiplayer games.

The genuine concerns of people 

Of course with technological breakthrough, it changes the way people live and work, just like we don’t need someone to light our streetlights manually, someone to drive the horse carriage for us, or even a person to help us pick the best movie to rent from the shop, people are concerned about being replaced by AI tools like midjourney, stable diffusion and DALLE for art, and Chat GPT for writers, the idea of a computer program that could spit a couple of pictures in mere seconds based on a text prompt wasn’t even thinkable  3 years ago, however, it’s a reality today, and one we need to deal with.

Why shouldn’t we be worried

Even if the current AI tools got rid of their issues (mainly with consistency and the coherence of the results) they still wouldn’t replace an artist in its field, same goes for writers, the level of artistic knowledge and refinement you need in order to make every art blends seemingly in one or multiple games couldn’t be described simply by writing words, same goes for writers, you need a deep understanding of a certain topic to even begin to write about and that couldn’t possibly be fit within a text prompt.

Final notes

I want to highlight some a use of the technology as it should and was originally meant to be which is brainstorming, Chat GPT is great for suggesting ideas to write about, and the image creation tools are great for conceptualizing an idea or could work like a base to better deliver an idea to the artist to draw. 



References:

How Do DALL·E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney Work? – MarkTechPost.

Video Game Design: The History of AI – Developers.dev

Role of Artificial Intelligence in Gaming – Pianalytix – Machine Learning

Proximal Policy Optimization

History of AI design in video games and its development in RTS games – Final Step.

20 jobs that don’t exist anymore – Study Work Grow

Featured image by: Frmorrison

The post AI in games, Marvelous Past, and a Concerning Future appeared first on Spoilz.

Most of MENA’s youth population have grown up as digital natives, and gaming plays a huge role in their entertainment. Thanks to the high penetration of smartphones and the internet, gaming has evolved dramatically in the last decade, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, referred to as MENA-3, where games revenue accounted for $1.76 billion in 2021.

Since its inception back in 2020, Spoilz has set its sights on this growing market. With its limitless strength to think big and be imaginative, it has endeavored to build partnerships with publishers and studios and invested in talent pool across the community to publish fun games for the world’s young and fast-growing population of gamers. This has earned the company an award in KAUST’s Game Jam for excellence in narrative for its “Re-Train” game; and allowed it to become the leading creator in the industry.

Spoilz Games CEO Musab Almalki commented: “MENA’s gaming industry is expected to grow rapidly in the next few months, creating a need for quality content to meet users’ expectations. This fund will enable us to grow and publish games that compete globally.”

Saudi Arabia’s games market accounted for the highest value among Arab Gulf countries in 2021, aptly positioning the kingdom as the gaming powerhouse of Arabic speaking nations in the MENA region. This growth was driven by the government’s support of this sector, as it seeks to diversify its predominantly oil-dependent economy. To this end, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has launched Savvy Gaming Group (SGG), to “create opportunities for the growth and diversification of Saudi Arabia’s economy, to help achieve the objectives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.”

The post Spoilz Games Secures 2.6 million SR in pre-seed funding round appeared first on Spoilz.

Saudi Arabia’s gaming market grew over 22% in 2021, bringing its value to over $1 billion and making it one of the fastest-growing gaming markets in the world. While markets in North America and Europe have traditionally dominated the video game and Esports sector, Saudi Arabia’s cutting-edge telecommunications infrastructure, educated labor force, and rapidly diversifying economy make it a desirable location for the next generation of games development studios.

Infrastructure & Support

Most people know Saudi Arabia for its oil and gas industry. Due to its 16% share of the world’s oil reserves, KSA has earned this well-deserved reputation. Consequently, there has been substantial investment into the infrastructure and well-funded initiatives by the government to encourage private sector growth in the technology sector.

Saudi Arabia has placed a high priority on digital infrastructure, with 5G now available in over half of the kingdom. As an example of the success of private sector investments, average download speeds for the top telecommunication providers have reached 370.12 Mbps. Critical infrastructure like this is the bedrock for a burgeoning tech sector. With fast, reliable internet, any locally based team is guaranteed to work faster and more effectively with their colleagues in-country and abroad.

Gaming has also been a focus of The Kingdom’s “Vision 2030,” a strategic framework adopted by the Saudi Arabian government to diversify the economy and support the growing private sector across a host of modern industries. As part of this initiative, the Saudi Public Investment Funds (PIF) established Savvy Gaming Group (SGG), a gaming company that is poised to play a leading role in supporting the global gaming industry.

In 2022, SGG has already made waves in the industry by acquiring two major e-sports platforms, ESL Gaming and Faceit. The two businesses are set to merge into a single subsidiary that will focus on building competitive gaming communities with end-to-end solutions. In addition, the company intends to act as a partner for other gaming companies looking to expand into new markets. PIF plans to invest $40 billion into the Saudi economy per year, with a portion going to SGG and more widely to the tech sector.

A Domestic Market with Real Potential

There are many opportunities for building global brands in Saudi Arabia, but it also represents a ripe domestic market. Almost two-thirds of Saudis are under 35, and gaming has grown rapidly over the past several years due to the increased availability of digital infrastructure and the growing market saturation of mobile phones.

Around 67 percent of the population are avid gamers, which makes up 23.5 million gamers in KSA. As a highly developed and young country, Saudi Arabia offers a market full of already avid gamers with high spending power. This is partly why Saudi Arabia represents the 19th largest gaming market in the world.

Gateway to MENA

MENA’s three largest gaming markets – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates – are projected to generate $3.14 billion in gaming revenues and to host 85.76 million gamers by 2025. In spite of these encouraging predictions, companies in the gaming sector may still be hesitant to invest in the region due to language barriers or concerns about infrastructure. A stepping stone to the region as a whole, Saudi Arabia offers a perfect solution to these hesitations.

By investing in Saudi Arabia, companies can feel comfortable knowing they have access to highly reliable and cutting-edge digital and physical infrastructure. It is the perfect foundation for supporting global business, along with the Kingdom’s status as a major Arabic-speaking country that offers a wonderful opportunity for localization. Companies operating in Saudi Arabia will have access to an extensive pool of experts who are natively proficient in the local language and market, resulting in a greater opportunity to expand across the region and develop an exciting and thriving game industry.

The post What the future holds for the game industry in Saudi Arabia? appeared first on Spoilz.

Battle Royale games have been popular for years, but because we do not like picking sides, we wanted to support the story games similarly in the previous article titled: “Why did the story games not die despite the dominance of the Battle Royale?”, And the story is not over yet; not even close.

Yes, games occupy a significant part of our life, but not all of them are expected to be good. Some long waited for games go down in the dumps, while unforecasted for success, become one of the best games of the year in which it was released in, even game of it’s entire generation.

Here we raise the million riyal question: Why do video games fail despite the “huge” marketing?

The Failure of massive Games: An array of factors delima

Lack of  Optimization

This time, begin the article with an online combat game that was expected to have a resounding success, but whose failure has become the scale of the total failure of video games in contemporary history.

It is ‘Anthem’ game published by Electronic Arts and developed by the well-known studio BioWare. The game’s marketing was huge in every sense of the word, no one had ever expected it to fall in such an emphatic manner. After a huge marketing campaign, the game was released on January 25, 2019, people bought it, people played it, and people left it.

that simple!

 

The reason is due to the lack of programmatic integration of the game with itself and with the devices running it. On the PC, the amount of bugs on the Origin player were really unbearable, and the gameplay itself was contradictory. And if the game opens its doors to you and the operator is satisfied with you, you will find that the tire fall is very clear and noticeable, which ruins the playing experience. Later, when EA caught the matter, they released updated patches, but only after people had already lost their passion.

Here we learn an important lesson: Constant and rapid development is the make or break line of video games in one form or another. Bioware studio is flawless, the great ‘Mass Effect’ series has developed, the release of the game well before crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s raised expectations for almost nothing..

Rushing to launch a game

The example here is ‘Godfall’, matter of fact, this example might seem unfortunate at first, as it’s one of the long awaited PS5 titles anyway, isn’t it?

The failure of video games is not only associated with integration, but also with haste, and haste in impulsary results in disasters, including the lack of integration itself. ‘Godfall’ was announced in the official review of the new PS5 games, and a meeting was held with the developers. And in the gaming industry, there is nothing better than promoting the game when a new console launches, an entire generation whose first games are the knockout, the cherry on top. And honestly, people’s expectations can be deadly for such games.

Unfortunately, that was it’s pitfall. According to some official reviews, the game was said to be more powerful than the console itself, which resulted in a noticeable frame drop, and completely ruined the gaming experience. The phrase was even bluntly said: “The game is worse than ‘Anthem’ and the ‘Avengers’,” which is really a big statement.

Besides some bumps in the Gameplay, on top of it is the similarity of double strikes in almost all weapons; This killed diversity.
All this resulted from the rush to release the game, if it was released later, the studio would have missed the launch, yes, but in return the game would have gotten the chance to fight at least, instead of being crushed in this unfortunate way.

Relying on the love of people only