By Chief Nyamweya
A
n unintentional experiment was carried out on Kenya’s urban youth born during and after the 1980’s. Whereas previous generations had only enjoyed the haggling trade of loud and colourful open-air markets and bazaars, many in this urban generation would instead gravitate to a new temple of modernity – the shopping mall. Keen to differentiate themselves, these malls (most notably The Sarit Centre) lined their corridors with arcade games which entranced toddlers and teens alike. Racers, shooters, sports games were conveniently located near game consoles and comic book vendors. This was the soil of Kenya’s gaming culture that would eventually pulsate into schools and neighbourhoods. The playtime rituals of this generation included prolonged meditations inside strange new alternate universes created by SEGA, Nintendo, Sony and others. These universes and the actions of the avatars within them were as real to them as the socalled “real world” with its countless distortions. This was the ground in which the seeds of Kenya’s gaming industry were planted.
The Players There’s something desperately unnerving about moving through spaces in the city I know so well as the sole survivor of an urban apocalypse. I am playing Andrew Kaggia’s Nairobi X. The strangely exuberant Kenyan voice in my ear urges me on as I hunt down aliens in the bowels of the Kenyatta International Conference Centre – the crown of Nairobi’s skyline. My avatar’s name is “Otero,” or Sheng for “Badass,” a name he wears perfectly as his laser and machine gun lay waste to a city of aliens hiding behind sponsorship banners. Kaggia, a prolific 3D animator and game developer who has been honing his craft for over 14 years, is – like many digital artists of this generation – self-taught.
The FuTure Content development is on the rise in Kenya. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at the “Africa Rising” headlines, which are more preoccupied with commodities and infrastructure than with intellectual property.
Nathan Masyuko, the founder of NexGen and After 6 Labs has dedicated himself to the promotion of a gaming culture and the “gamification” of ordinary life. His started down this path after meeting professional gamers at an online gamers’ tournament in China. This path has seen him win awards and share a stage with Larry King at Games for Change for his development of the Android game Haki–Shield and Defend in concert with South Africabased Afroes Transformational Games. He is circumspect about the heavy involvement of corporate sponsors in the local gaming scene. “It hints at the growing awareness of the power of gaming,” Masyuko says. “The global gaming industry overtook the film industry by revenue a long time ago. It will take some investment for us to hit critical mass.”
This growing awareness is undeniable. One example is the success of Ma3Racer (www.ma3racer.com), a racing game by Planet Rackus in which the player is a matatu (minibus) driver. The game draws on the considerable cultural power of matatu culture which is an unrivalled engine of music, language and iconography. In a bid to drive audience growth, Wesley Kirinya of Leti Games’ (www.letiarts.com) has been partnering up with other game-developers around the continent, most notably Ghana, in order to crosspollinate Africa’s growing games market. The list is growing everyday as new start-ups such as ScrinArts Studios (www.scrinarts.com) are hard at work testing the potential of game engines such as Unity. 7
The intersection of high literacy, mobile phones, cheap internet, digital migration and local legislation has led to a massive content gap for which Kenya’s legacy media has found itself utterly unprepared for. One consequence has been a massive migration of talent and treasure to new media platforms by advertisers, educators and anyone trying to get a minute of the fleeting attention of a generation evolving at warpspeed. Yesterday’s challenges of underinvestment, slow technology transfers, and the absence of defined career-paths are transforming into strengths. However, much work still remains for the country in improving training, especially in game design and development. Nevertheless, the “scramble for Africa’s imagination” is underway, and the likely custodians of the information empires of tomorrow are walking avatars in Superman t-shirts. All bets are off as to what the universe they create will look like, but something tells me it will be much more explosive.