Wixel Studios make games that play on the realities of this world. In the process, they’re transforming the realities of the region’s video game industry. The gaming company Wixel Studios plays best in inversions. When there’s a reality before them, it’s turned, and then twisted, till their creation either allays a wrong or reveals an essential truth. “We’re always working in a response,” remarks Ziad Feghali, CEO and cofounder of the company. Take their first game: Douma, or “Puppeteer” in Arabic. It certainly got media play amidst local Lebanese press. In the street fighter style game you select one of Lebanon’s politicians (Aoun, Geagea, Franjieh, Hariri, Jumblatt or Nasrallah) and square off against another from the opposing camp. Every time a politicians wins a fight, his score publicly accumulates.The Wixel Studios team is made up of Reine Abbas, the head of art and Feghali’s wife, and Karim Abi Saleh, head of programming. The reality they faced materialized during the 2006 tensions. Feghali and Abbas were trapped on a bridge as they watched two groups, separated by burning tires, shouting and tossing rocks at each other – quite literally the street fighting that the game mimics.
