A virtual world for the Arab world, in the Roman empire. Every day, almost half a million Arabs choose to spend their time dealing with marauding bands of Gauls, battling fierce Teutons and maintaining tracts of Roman farmland. These are the loyal users of Travian, an online computer strategy game similar to World of Warcraft or Command and Conquer, but with two crucial tweaks - it can be played inside a web browser, and in Arabic. These features have helped the game, developed by a German university student, become one of the great runaway success stories of the Arabic internet, played by almost one in every 10 Arabic speakers with web access.
This makes Travian one of the few corners of the web where people from the Middle East are disproportionately represented. Despite representing less than three per cent of the world's internet users and generating less than one per cent of all internet content, Arabic speakers make up more than 10 per cent of Travian's four million active users. Put differently: for every Twitter user in the Middle East, the are more than 100 people playing Travian on a weekly basis.
"It feels good, to be in a place that is like a home for Arabs, for once not to be the weird guys standing in the corner," said Ziad, a doctor from Saudi Arabia, who describes his online Travian persona as "Roman, wanting long-term alliances, planning some big conquests". Ziad keeps a browser window with his Travian account open throughout the day at his clinic, which is located in one of the Kingdom's most prominent hospitals (this is why he asked for his last name to be withheld). "Too many people in the hospital are playing it," he explained. "The IT guys have blocked the website, but if you grow up in Saudi, you know how to get around these things."
Travian is played in real time, and is not a game for those who crave instant action. Instruct your farmers to upgrade their equipment and you are told it will take half an hour, which it does. Good players - who must administer a thriving city centre, multiple farms and other resource-gathering operations to support a conquering army - log into the game for many hours each day. Ziad keeps it running throughout long hospital shifts, and he has Travian running on his computer when he is home. "The rest of the time, it's open on my BlackBerry," he said. "I make a big time investment. But, as you will see when you visit my lands, it has been worth it."
Users of popular websites like Facebook are likely to have seen banner advertising for Travian, with the company using the site and many others to target Middle Eastern web surfers with ads for its Arabic-language service. The game's popularity in the region has its parent company thinking big about how to capitalise on the Arabic world, said Bernd Heinisch, the head of marketing at Travian Games in Germany. "It has grown so big that we plan something specific and new exclusively for the Arab community," he said.
Heinisch, who has overseen the launch of Travian in 40 languages, has a theory that the game's powerful resonance in the Arab world comes from its focus on grand strategy, rather than instant stimulation. "We're talking about the region where chess has its origins, the home of so many strategy games," he said. "In many ways, Travian is similar to chess. Every individual move is simple, a child can do it. But to understand the whole picture and play against a master will take months or years of practice."
Luckily for Travian, the region that appreciates its product also happens to be home to some of the world's wealthiest consumers. Since activating a feature that allows players to purchase game-world gold (the game's key resource) with real-world money, Travian has found Arab players keen to invest, particularly those from Saudi Arabia, Travian's biggest Middle East market. "They love investing in their village, building up their projects. It makes people especially happy, and the return on the investment is a real sense of pride," Mr Heinisch said. "They are happy to spend more money on more features. So now we're planning on a kind of Arabic VIP version."
* Tom Gara
