Portrait of a Nation: Emirati with calling card to create gamer community

Omar Sharif, 33, is in the process of opening a community-based gaming store called Geeky Lizard, a childhood dream of his.

Emirati Omar Sharif with some of his prized collectables in his Mirdif home. Mr Sharif is the founder of Geeky Lizard, a table-top gaming store and hobby shop which is supported by Khalifa Fund. SarahShow more

DUBAI // As a child, Omar Sharif never thought that his passion for board games and other geeky pursuits would change his life.

But Mr Sharif, 33, is in the process of opening a community-based gaming store called Geeky Lizard, a childhood dream.

“Essentially, it is a dream of two eight-year old Emirati kids. We wanted a store where we could have all the geeky stuff we were into,” said Mr Sharif, who works for Dewa. He “would walk 20 minutes in the heat through the sand between neighbourhoods just to go to [his] friend’s place” to share his gaming passion.

Mr Sharif’s interests matured, and he sought table-top games that required intense strategies. But with no community in which to pursue those passions, he grew disillusioned.

“The thing to worry about the most is when you can be passionate about something but you were forced to follow the norm,” he said. “This happened to me and it’s sad to know it happens to lots of people.”

Without a gaming community, Mr Sharif sought companionship in Dubai nightlife.

“In my teens, because I had nobody to game with, the next thing to do as a teen and a social person is to go out and have fun,” he said.

But the hard partying atmosphere caught up to him.

“I’ve partied a lot,” he said. “I’ve brushed with incidents where I should have died and – worst of all – I have lost friends from accidents – moments where I shook hands just before they died.”

He began to question his motivation.

“Nightlife is fun, but one day I asked myself, ‘What am I doing? Who am I trying to impress and what am I giving back to my community’? We are taught as Emiratis to ask ourselves, ‘What have we done for our country?’”

During this time, a colleague introduced Mr Sharif to Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing fantasy game, and Magic the Gathering, a trading card game.

"He asked me if I ever played, we sat down, I made my character and I literally felt like I was in a scene of a movie in Lord of the Rings," Mr Sharif said. "It was so much fun that three hours had gone by and I refused to leave, and that reignited something in me.

“I started playing games again and I realised that I was having the same amount of fun playing with like-minded people with a good sense of humour and making friends without needing to put my life in danger at the end of the night,” he said.

Although he found a larger community of gamers, he found the atmosphere exclusive. “Some players were very abusive. I didn’t like that so I wanted to create an environment where anyone – it doesn’t matter who – can come and just enjoy themselves, and be introduced to new experiences,” he said.

The concept behind Geeky Lizard, his gaming business, was to create “a place where the nerds, the geeks, the alternative and the parents with kids like that can go there and not feel alienated”.

Mr Sharif applied for funding through Government programmes that aided entrepreneurs, but was met with scepticism because of the type of business he wanted to operate.

It wasn’t until he applied to the Khalifa Fund that he was given the support he needed. He presented them with the idea of creating a safe environment for a human necessity.

“The fact of the matter is, all of us need human interaction,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a human without it, we’re born with that need for community. It’s even mentioned in the Quran, and that’s really the core of Geeky Lizard.”