Every day in Cairo’s apartments and the coffee shops of Giza’s crowded neighborhoods, millions of Egyptians settle in at their computers or pull their phones from their pockets, preparing to game for hours. For most, gaming is a leisure activity. For a growing number, it is an activity that is hard to walk away from. Egypt sits at the center of this compulsion, where some players can not stop gaming. According to a 2023 report by Niko Partners, a video games business research company, Egyptians accounted for 40 million players, representing 58.5 percent of gamers across the three largest gaming markets in the MENA region, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. And Egyptians are not just playing; they are playing longer than almost anyone else. Egyptians lead globally in daily gaming, averaging 1 hour and 43 minutes per day. Play becomes a disorder That appetite for gaming comes with a cost. As of 2021, around 3 percent of the global gaming population, estimated at 2.96 billion people, are addicted to gaming. In Egypt, according to a 2023 survey by Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), 43.5…
