Tag Archives: games

At7addak.com – A New Online Gaming Website for Lebanese and Arabs

A new Lebanese website was launched in the Lebanese and Arab cyberspace today: At7addak, serving as a social platform for the region’s gamers to, well, play against each other.

The whole idea started when Brahms Chouity’s very pregnant wife kicked him off the couch, which he was using to play PS3 with friends in between ventures, and gave him the push to make a living out of his passion: gaming. And with that, he started his own gaming company: At7addak, with plans to create an arab gaming league.

At7addak.com allows users to sign up and create free accounts. Through these accounts, they can challenge other users via head-to-head or multiplayer modes in the games available on the website. The more these users play, the more points they gain, and consequently the more awards they receive.

These users can also chat via the website’s forums, mainly about current games and upcoming releases, as well as other topics, further contributing to its purpose of an online gamers community. The website will also be up to date will all games-related news: publishers, new releases, technological advances, etc… So for those gamers who don’t want to search for their news everywhere, the website will suffice.

Every season, At7addak will launch online tournaments, categorized according to country and game title. Only users with enough points will be able to participate in these tournaments. Gamers will square off against each other, with their position fluctuating on the leaderboard, depending on how often they win or lose.

At the end of every gaming season, top gamers from each country and game will advance to their “Country Championship Final.” This is not online. It’s a real event that takes place in each country. Gamers will get to meet each other and compete against each other in a tense environment. The winners of these championships will be adorned with great prizes and they will qualify for the “Arab Championship Final,” the conclusion of every gaming season.

In the “Arab Championship Final,” top gamers from across Arab countries and Lebanon will fight it out. The winner will be announced the top gamer of them all and he will win great prizes.

What kind of prizes are we talking about? Well, let me give you an exclusive sneak peak.

On September 3rd, starting 1:00 PM,  there will be a Call of Duty competition at the Beirut Warehouse and Loft. And two of my blog’s readers will get the chance to compete.

What’s at stake?

*Insert dramatic cinematic cue*

The chance to win $10,000.

The location can serve up to 5000 spectators and admission is free. So for those Call of Duty gamers who are interested, all you have to do is follow @At7addak and @eliefares on twitter and tweet the following:

[NEW POST] At7addak.com – A New Online Gaming Website for Lebanese and Arabs http://bit.ly/nvLJZy #At7addak

The competition will end on Wednesday, August 10th at midnight. The draw will take place on Thursday, August 11th.

The event will also have:

• Skateboard and BMX ramp shows
• Extreme racing cars show
• Graffiti artist mural
• Sponsors’ booths
• Gaming lounges
• Large screen projectors
• Live online feed of the action
• Goodie bags and giveaways
• Black Ops real-life military personnel
• At7addak.com army girls
• Food & Beverage

Those of you who do so will enter a raffle (which will be clean and does not include cheating, just to put it out there) to pick out the lucky two.

Let the games begin…

Pottermore Revealed

JK Rowling has just revealed on Pottermore’s website what the thing is all about.

She said: “I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years. Pottermore is a way for the creativity to live on and a way for me to be creative on a platform that did not exist when I started writing the books.”

It is a free website that builds an online experience based on reading the Harry Potter books. People can register for the challenge starting today and one million users will be selected by July 31st (which happens to be both JK Rowling and Harry Potter’s birthday), after they successfully complete the challenge, for early testing of the website, with full public availability in October.

Registration is currently down on the Pottermore website, which you can access here, probably due to an overload of Potterheads trying to get their emails through.

The announcement came via JK Rowling’s youtube page, through a video, in which she said:

Thirteen years after the first Harry Potter book was published, I’m still astonished and delighted by the response the stories met. Even though the seventh book and the eighth movie have now been completed, I’m still receiving hundreds of letters every week and Harry’s fans remain as enthusiastic and inventive as ever. So I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you, because no author could have asked for a more wonderful, diverse and loyal readership.

I’m thrilled to say that I’m now in a position to give you something unique. An online reading experience unlike any other: it’s called Pottermore. It’s the same story, with a few crucial additions. The most important one is you.

Just as the experience of reading requires that the imaginations of the author and reader work together to create the story, so Pottermore will be built, in part, by you, the reader. The digital generation will be able to enjoy a safe, unique, online reading experience built around the Harry Potter books. Pottermore will be the place where fans of any age can share, participate in and rediscover the stories. It will also be the exclusive place to purchase digital audiobooks and, for the first time, e-books of the Harry Potter stories.

I will be joining in too because I will be sharing additional information I’ve been hoarding for years about the world of Harry Potter. Pottermore is open to everyone from October but a lucky few can enter early and help shape the experience. Simply follow the owl. Good luck.

The project will allow readers to answer their own questions, get sorted in Hogwarts houses, play games, add comments, drawings, etc…

The project has also been carefully planned to be spoiler-free. For the time-being, the world of Pottermore will be restricted to the first book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the US version), with the story unveiled over a two-year course, for new readers. It will enable them to live each impact moment of the books.

The new material by JK Rowling is said to be around 18000 words so far. The e-books will be DRM free, meaning they can be viewed across platforms without the need to purchase them again, but they will be watermarked with the buyer’s info. While this doesn’t prevent copyright theft, the file can be retraced to the original buyer.

“This was about the give-back,” she said. “The technology now existed to do something outside the books and the films for existing fans.”

And the attempt to register starts… now!