Former airline captain hoping to create the Gen Con of Dubai with launch of the Middle East’s first dedicated board game convention

A former airline pilot who has spent the last decade building a board game distribution business and chain of retailers in the Middle East is hoping to create the region’s equivalent of Gen Con with the launch of a Dubai-based convention this November.

More than 50 publishers including Stonemaier Games, Leder Games, Games Workshop and Wizards of the Coast will be exhibiting or represented at the first tabletop.me, while over 250 games will be available for teaching and play in a 7,300 sq m open gaming hall, organiser Mark Azzam told BoardGameWire.

Azzam said he is hoping to attract several thousand attendees from across the region to the debut event, with the majority expected to visit from the United Arab Emirates, large contingents from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and others from nearby Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain – a group of countries which boasts a population nearly 150 million people.

He said of the region, “Tabletop gaming culture has grown massively in the past eight years, and we feel this is the right time, we can actually get a few thousand people into one location.”

That belief is boosted by the lack of easily accessible alternatives for people in the region, Azzam says. Reaching Indianapolis for Gen Con requires almost a full 24 hours of travel in both directions, while the nearest options of Germany’s Spiel Essen or France’s Festival International des Jeux are both six or seven hours of flight time away.

While board gaming has an extremely long history in the Middle East – the Royal Game of Ur, one of the world’s oldest board games dating back to about 2,500 BC, hails from the area covered by modern-day Iraq – modern hobby gaming has been slower to penetrate than in other parts of the globe.

Global board game publishing and distribution giant Asmodee, which boasts of selling games in around 100 countries, does not even mention the region in its annual report – speaking only of Europe, North and South America and Asia when discussing its global operations.

Increasing numbers of modern board games have made their way to the Middle East over the past decade, however, with big name titles such as Catan, Codenames and Terraforming Mars available in localised Arabic versions thanks to Dubai and Lebanon-based SuperHeated Neurons, and many more English-language titles also becoming available over time.

Azzam picked up the board game bug while growing up in Canada, before his career as a pilot brought him to Abu Dhabi to fly for UAE national carrier Etihad Airways.

His love for the hobby continued, but Azzam quickly realised opportunities to pick up modern board games in Dubai were extremely limited – with either flying in his own copies or browsing the smattering available at Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya his only real options for collecting new titles.

Spotting a gap in the market, Azzam funnelled his savings into launching a small kiosk in The Dubai Mall in 2015, before launching his first Back to Games store in Abu Dhabi six months later.

He now runs a trio of stores across Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and in 2017 became co-owner of local board game publisher and distributor Boardgame Space, which he says has localised more than 55 titles.

That growing board game operation led to him leave his job as an airline captain in 2023 to go full time within the industry, given the demands it was making on his time.

He said, “The convention really was my cherry on top of this whole thing we’ve been doing, and I really, really did not want it to fail. So I sacrificed flying for that.”

Azzam told BoardGameWire he originally planned to launch a Dubai-based board game convention around 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic put those preparations on ice.

But that operation is now back in full swing, with Azzam’s business contacts made through his retail and distribution business proving key in attracting publishers to the event.

Sean Wainwright, hobby channel sales and portfolio manager at Lucky Duck Games, told BoardGameWire, “When I was approached by Mark at BGS to support his new venture in starting a convention in UAE to grow the gaming community and presence in the area, I was absolutely interested in being a part of it.

“He and I discussed this very topic a few years back during Essen Spiel as yet another way to expand the outreach of gaming in their region.

“Mark has shown his incredible passion for this industry through the many different businesses he has started supporting all sides from retail, distribution, publishing, and now event hosting.”

That sentiment was echoed by David Chircop, CEO and lead game designer at Mighty Boards. He said, “We think a new convention like this in a region that has not seen one before is a fantastic initiative that we are very happy to support and excited to be part of.

“Here in Malta, we also until recently didn’t have a proper board game convention, so we certainly know how it feels!”

Lydie Vlah, international sales director at Amigo, told BoardGameWire, “UAE and the region are new emerging markets for Amigo and it is very important that we are present from the very beginning at this kind of events.

“Boardgame Space is one of our distributing partners in the region and we are happy to support them in their initiative to promote board games in their territories.”

The debut tabletop.me convention will run from November 7 to 9, with a trade night being held the evening before the event kicks off.

More than 25 tabletop gaming tournaments for games including Pokemon TCG, Magic, Catan and Warhammer 40,000 are also planned for this year’s event, with about AED80,000 ($21,700) in prize money up for grabs.

Tickets for this year’s show are available here.

Full list of publishers exhibiting at this year’s show:

• AEG
• allplay
• AMIGO Spiel
• Asmodee Group
• Bandai TCG (One Piece Card Game, Digimon, Gundam TCG, Dragon Ball Super Card Game)
• Blue Orange Games
• Brain Games
• Burnt Island Games/KTBG
• Calliope Games
• CGE
• Chaosium
• Dice Throne
• Dire Wolf
• Eagle-Gryphon Games
• Emberglow Gaming
• Exploding Kittens
• FFG (Star Wars: Unlimited)
• Games Workshop (Warhammer 40K + Kill Team)
• Glass Cannon Games
• HELVETIQ (through their regional Qatari distributor)
• Horrible Guild
• Iconiq
• IELLO
• Incredible Dream
• Konami (Yu-Gi-Oh!)
• Lautapelit
• Leder Games
• Life TCG (through their local UAE distributor)
• Lucky Duck Games
• Ludivore
• Mighty Boards
• Modiphius
• OINK Games
• Pokémon (Pokémon TCG)
• Rebel Studios
• Roxley Games
• Stonemaier Games
• Three Joy Games
• UVS Games (Riftbound TCG)
• Weebs of the Shore (Grand Archive TCG)
• Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering)
• Arcane Tinmen (Dragon Shield) – Sponsoring
• Ravensburger Puzzles (through their local UAE distributor) – Sponsoring
• BOO WHO (publisher from the UAE)
• Cation Arts (publisher from the UAE)
• Desolation Terra (publisher from Oman)
• Dream Ally (publisher from Kuwait)
• Elab (publisher from Kuwait)
• Gealias (publisher from Lebanon)
• Level X (publisher from Lebanon)
• Maghara Studios (publisher from Egypt)
• Majlis il Shabab (publisher from Qatar)
• Nabu Studios (publisher from Iraq)
• RACKS (publisher from the UAE)
• The Bored Game Company (manufacturer & localiser from India)
• Yam3aa Group (publisher from Kuwait)