Quraish

I came across an article by coincidence about the first Real Time strategy game in Arabic, called Quraish. The game is made by a Syrian multimedia and technology company called Afkar Media Productions. Quraish is a 3D real time strategy game about the first 100 years of Islam. The name of the game is based on the name of the chief tribe used to live in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. There is a contradiction between the name of the game with the content of the game, which focus on Islam rather than on a tribe.

According to the makers of the game, it is not about war and conquest, but more to manage and administrator like any real time strategy game of that kind, such as Command & Conquer Generals, or Age of Empires series, or even Red Alert, so no need to explain more how these games are supposed to be played with! The game consists of four campaigns, with more than 30 levels. The player can play the role of Bedouin sheik and “earn your tribe respect”, or command an army “as the only hope of the new born Moslem state, defeat the gathering tribes round your capital and push them back through the burning sands of Arabia”, or simply follow the conquer routs of Muslim heroes and generals like Khaled Ibn Al Waleed and Abu Ubaida Al Jarrah. The game has been made in a way to reflect every detail of each culture each character the players takes; this includes buildings, custom, military and war tactics…etc

The main goal for the makers of this game is to answer questions such as: how Islam and Muslims spread their religion to the different countries? Where they any different from any other military force around history? How did Muslims deal with other cultures, religions and societies they met? It is not only about leading an army to victory, but the game also expands for the player to perform other tasks such as the preservation of water resources, ensure safe trading routes and maintain good economic situation for the tribe or the nation.

The official website of the game is very well designed but it has not been updated since October 2006. However, it seems that the makers of the game and the designers of the website wanted to ensure that anyone from any country in the world can be familiar with the timeline, the characters, the battle names and events, and even with tribes. In addition, there are plenty of information on the way the game was made, with many pictures and screenshots. The game can be played in both Arabic and English (with help of American-Muslims). There is also a discussion forum where people already gave feedback and many offered their help and suggestions to improve the game in many ways.

As usual with discouragement factors in the Arab world, there are two common problems: first is marketing, especially with the advert of seeking international distributors. The other is budgeting, which is also plays a role in improving everything! In addition, I wished there was a kind of a demo can be download from the website, so a portion can be seen of the game and this in itself can be as a marketing tool for the game itself.



The official website is: http://www.quraishgame.com/