Yalla Ludo made Yalla Group one of MENA's biggest games success stories by being unapologetically local. Now the Dubai-based, NYSE-listed company is testing whether that approach can work far beyond the region.

Its first self-developed match-three, the car-themed Turbo Match, was built for global players from day one, with the US and Europe in its sights.

We caught up with Yalla Group president Saifi Ismail ahead of his PGC Jordan talk, 'From Local Insight To Lasting Growth: Building Successful Gaming Businesses In MENA', to ask if the MENA playbook works abroad.

"I wouldn't say we had to unlearn the playbook that made us successful in MENA," he says. "Rather, we've learned to distinguish between the core principles that are universal and the strategies that need to be adapted to different markets."

"Yalla Ludo's success was built on our deep understanding of local users, their cultural preferences and the importance of social interaction," he explains. "It reinforced a fundamental belief: successful games are built around what players genuinely enjoy, rather than what developers assume they want."

That thinking is codified in the company's core values, which Ismail sums up with the acronym MUST: Multicultural Understanding, User First, Simple and Target. Those values, he says, "continue to guide our global expansion".

The match-three genre choice is very deliberate. "Match-three games have broad global appeal, making the genre a natural starting point for reaching international audiences," Ismail says.

But he is practical about the gap between Yalla's home turf and its new targets.

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