It's a bright day in Abu Dhabi as we crowd into The Creative Labs at twofour54. Sitting on the desk next to a huge PC tower and a myriad of cables, is the Oculus Rift. We're sitting down to chat with Alan Robinson, a UAE-based game developer who's created Atajrubah, a game with a Middle Eastern setting that you can play on the Oculus Rift. The game still needs a lot of work put into it, but the pre-alpha code that we played with certainly gave us a good idea of where the game is trying to go. We sat down with Alan to find out more about his game and what his thoughts were on the game development scene in the region.

Why did you decide to produce a game that would run on the Oculus Rift rather than something that could run on the PC or Console?

The Oculus Rift is a different way of experiencing a game. It doesn’t matter if you are using a console or a pc because at the end of the day the console manufacturers, at one point or another will include support for the device. It runs on HDMI and uses USB like all consoles. When I saw it, it reminded me of when I was a kid, when I first got into 3D modelling, always thinking to myself “How can I make this more immersive? How can I make this 3-D environment feel like I’m there?” and I saw the quality of the device and I thought to myself “I have to do this.”

What was your major source of inspiration for designing this game?

For what I would like to be able to do in the game, like crafting, exploration, interacting with other players, it was definitely two games - Minecraft and DayZ. I spent hours and hours playing DayZ but I wanted to have it in a setting that people don’t really bother exploring much outside of stereotypes. I didn’t want it to be like see in Hollywood films and certainly not the way Arabs are depicted in Hollywood films and in games. I wanted to be able to look at the purely cultural aspect as well.

What has been your biggest hurdle in, first of all, designing a game for the Oculus Rift and secondly, trying to get a game up and running in this region?

A: Well twofour54 has been very good with putting up the Creative Lab for people to come in and develop these ideas, which is great. Funding is still very scarce in the UAE because gaming and game development is seen as a passion or a hobby and not generally seen as a career that you can pursue, or something that you can make money out of.

So how far along do you think it will take for game development in the Middle East to be something that people will pay attention to?

Well, Industry here has been the main focus since the ‘70s. It has been the focus since the last thirty or forty plus years so it’s a mindset to be changed over not just one generation but two. The film industry now is getting to the point where people can see others making money in producing films and that’s a journey that has taken the past ten years. It’s going to be something around five to ten years. They are opening places where you can do training, you have game companies opening even if they are companies that only do localisation of games. But there needs to be more funds available. You can sit and develop a prototype to a certain point, but after that you need funding.

Why did you decide to set your game in a Middle Eastern Setting?

I first came to the UAE in 2003. My experiences in travelling back between the UAE and my home country, South Africa, as well as some travelling in Asia gave me the time to look at all these different cultures, but I didn’t take time to look at the culture that’s here. It’s completely different. I feel a greater sense of adventure here - it’s one of those settings where you have to survive.

The game is now in a pre-alpha stage - are you looking to getting more people involved on the teams so you can speed up the process?

Right now, I have two other people who are working on this with me. There’s the Environment Modeller in Texas, he sends me assets and I detail them in ZBrush and I paint them, texture them and put them in the game engine. I also have a concept artist in Singapore, a very talented and humble guy and he’s been helping me with the concept art for the game. I would ideally like to start an Indiegogo campaign for the game as well. There’s a studio in the UK who have offered to do five tracks for the game at a ridiculously low price compared to what you would normally be charged. I need programming assistance because I’m a fairly competent programmer but I don’t have network programming experience so I’ve got basic multiplayer in here already but it’s not online multiplayer. There’s a friend of mine who has a studio in Dubai, and he’s a fantastic sound engineer, so he’s also offered to help redo all the sounds, so it can become more authentic. I’d like to get the game into an offline alpha so people can get the game and play with each other, even though it’s in a very rough stage, and then send their feedback.

You can follow progress on the game here.