Arabic gaming app Lumba Inc. was launched by Abdullah Alzabin, a young Saudi, Harvard graduate and a popular gaming app developer. Alzabin developed three games over the past three years bridging the market gap and potential he saw in the lack of variety of games available to the Arabic speaking world. He is also excited to launch a game on ‘Temsa7' a popular Saudi YouTube series very soon. “It was simply because we liked games and felt there was an unmet need in the market for high quality Arabic mobile games.” Alzabin started with a small team consisting of a product manager, designer and few software engineers to build their first game ‘Desert Tycoon'. “We launched it a few months later, learned a lot from the many mistakes we had in Desert Tycoon, and took those lessons and applied them to our second game ‘Tribal Rivals'. We launched Tribal Rivals and are thankfully having good success with it, but are still learning and applying those lessons to our third game. In short, it is obvious that a big part of our evolutionary process is defined by games that we launch and lessons that we learn from them.” Their games are free-to-play which means they are free to download and play, with some in-game products available for the user to purchase if he/she chooses to do so. As for it's success, between Desert Tycoon and Tribal Rivals, Alzabin told Saudi Gazette, they have had over threw million downloads. “Both games are loved by our players and enjoy strong ratings above 4 out of 5 stars.” Their games are available on both the iOS and Android platforms. When asked how many people actually use the app on a daily basis, Alzabin declined to answer. The mobile game development company is largely focused on the Arabic speaking world. “We are looking to redefine Arabic entertainment for this new generation of youth by developing visually beautiful, culturally relevant, fun Arabic mobile games,” Alzabin told Saudi Gazette. With an increasing role of young Saudi app developers, Alzabin believes youth participation will allow further encouragement and influx of talent. “The region is flush with talented young developers that are skilled software engineers and designers. We are seeing some great apps and games, but would certainly love to see more. I believe it is simply a matter of [social] encouragement and [professional] guidance that is needed to demystify this seemingly intimidating world of apps and games for young developers to go after.” Considering the market dynamics, Alzabin said he is assembling a larger team of talented artists, designers, and software engineers to build the next generations of Lumba games. “The region's market is hungry for the type of content we make. We think there's no better way to continue delivering fun and beautiful Arabic mobile games to the region's youth than to have their peers - who we are hiring and training - develop games for them.” Looking forward, Alzabin has plans to work with popular Saudi media hub Telfaz 11. “We partnered with Telfaz11 - a popular Youtube production studio in Riyadh - to develop a game for one of their popular shows ‘Temsa7'. We plan to release it very soon. We are also in the design phase of a couple of new fun games that will appeal to other segments of smartphones users that we have not yet targeted.” Stay tuned!
