When players boot up the latest Resident Evil game, they will see the work of an Egyptian studio that has quietly become one of the gaming industry’s most trusted specialists in digital character creation.
Released on February 27, Resident Evil Requiem is Capcom’s ninth mainline Resident Evil game. The title has already made a major impact, with Capcom reporting sales of more than five million units worldwide in under a week.
Behind its haunted corridors and high-tension action is Snappers Systems, a company founded in Egypt with a branch in Dubai and a technical team largely based in Cairo. According to co-founder and chief technology officer Yasser El Sherbini, the studio worked on every character in the game.
“Whenever you see a character, you can assume Snappers worked on something in that character,” he says.
For most players, facial rigging is invisible work. It is not as immediately obvious as a cinematic cut scene or a monster design. But it is one of the processes that determines whether a digital character feels expressive, believable and “alive”. Facial rigging is described as the system of controls that moves the eyes, eyebrows, mouth and other features so characters can convey emotion, while Snappers says its own technology is built to give artists detailed, lifelike control over facial deformation and expression.
In practical terms, that means helping a character sneer, panic, grimace, mutter or stare in a way that feels convincing rather than artificial. In horror games, especially, where tension often depends on how a face reacts in close-up, that level of detail matters.
El Sherbini says Snappers did not begin with the intention of becoming a character specialist. The company started in 2011 with motion capture systems, including early real-time facial motion capture prototypes. A YouTube demonstration of that technology gained attention beyond Egypt and prompted enquiries from major studios. At the time, the team could not yet sell the software as a finished product, but they could provide related services.
That opened the door to 2K, which was then working on Mafia III. From there, Snappers began building a reputation in a niche that few studios occupy. Warner Bros Games followed with Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat. Then came Activision, Infinity Ward, EA and, eventually, Capcom.
What makes the studio’s rise more striking is its size. El Sherbini says the company began with just two founders, one focused on the technical side and the other on art. Even on a large title such as Mafia III, the team was only four people. On Call of Duty, it was five. Today, Snappers has grown to about 30 employees.
That growth has not been simple. El Sherbini says one of the biggest challenges has been talent development. Modelling skills are easier to find, but facial rigging is far more specialised. The company usually hires people for their potential, then trains them in-house through its own pipeline, tools and teaching materials.
He argues that this hybrid discipline, where artistic sensitivity meets deep technical problem-solving, remains rare not only in Egypt but globally. “We usually look for artists who have talent and the potential to learn,” he says.
That shortage of specialist talent is one reason companies continue to outsource character work to teams such as Snappers. Its own website describes the studio as a character-focused company working across modelling, texturing, look development, animation and facial rigging for AAA games and films.
Capcom, El Sherbini says, first contacted Snappers back in 2014, but the studio’s portfolio was still too small at the time to fully reassure a Japanese publisher of that scale. Capcom returned in 2018 and Snappers has been working with the company since 2020, thanks largely to the years it put in working on big-budget projects.
El Sherbini describes the Japanese publisher as one of the most meticulous clients the team has worked with. Discussions could go down to the level of pores on a character’s face. Feedback moves back and forth constantly. The process is demanding, but respectful.
“They treat us as experts in our field and value our opinions,” he says.
For El Sherbini, that respect matters. So does the broader question of recognition. Although Snappers is well known among major international companies, he believes the Arab games industry is still too young for studios like his to receive the kind of attention they might elsewhere. Production capacity in the region remains limited, especially for the kind of large-scale titles that require highly specialised character work.
Still, he sees change coming. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, he says, are beginning to build the kind of momentum that could support a stronger regional games ecosystem. Snappers now wants to focus more seriously on the Middle East, not only as a service provider for overseas publishers, but also as part of a maturing Arab development scene.
That ambition sits alongside the company’s next technical frontier. Snappers is now exploring AI-integrated “virtual actors”, interactive digital characters whose personality, performance and appearance can be directed more dynamically.
For now, though, its most visible achievement is already on screens around the world. Players may not know the name Snappers Systems when they load up Resident Evil Requiem. But if they connect with the fear, tension or humanity in a character’s face, chances are they are appreciating the work of a tiny Cairo studio that has spent more than a decade perfecting an art most people don't consciously notice.
