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Abstract
In Kenya, the rise of digital technologies and related new media, and an infrastructure able to support them, has seen the emergence of a growing local video games industry and a new generation of Kenyan video game developers, players and promoters. This article focuses on the particular design strategies employed by young producers of creative digital content for games and the current networks of practice, play and support unfolding around these new gaming technologies. Interviewees for this paper span industry experts and independent artists operating in and beyond the capital city of Nairobi.
The article will examine:
Strategies employed by these developers and promoters looking to create and advocate local content, i.e., visual and narrative game environments referencing histories and folklore specific to their cultural context.
Real or virtual spaces of interaction and networks these games developers, promoters and players operate within – including gaming studios, entertainment parlours, technology hubs, gaming conventions and online SNS interest groups and video channels – and the ways in which these spaces might support the emergence, development and increased distribution of Kenyan games that incorporate local cultural context and regional folklore.
Utilizing anthropological models of ethnographic interviews and visual culture methodologies informed by design research methods and trends analysis, we examine the characteristics of gaming in Kenya (whether aesthetic, cultural or organizational) that are distinctive in relation to the more mainstream and dominant Western formats.
Au Kenya, c’est dans le cadre d’une montée des technologies numériques et nouveaux medias y afférant, et d’une infrastructure capable de les soutenir, que l’on a vu émerger la croissance d’une industrie locale des jeux vidéo et une nouvelle génération de développeurs, de joueurs et de promoteurs de jeu vidéo kenyans. Cet article se concentre sur les stratégies particulières de conception employées par de jeunes producteurs de contenu numérique créatif pour les jeux et les réseaux actuels de pratique, de jeu et de soutien qui déroulent autour de ces nouvelles technologies du jeu. Les personnes interrogées pour cet article allaient d’experts dans le domaine à des artistes indépendants fonctionnant dans la capitale de Nairobi et au-delà.
Cet article examiner :
III. Les stratégies employées par les développeurs et promoteurs cherchant à créer et défendre un contenu local, i.e. des environnements visuels et narratifs de jeux se référant à des histoires et folklore spécifiques à leur contexte culturel.
IV. Les espaces d’interaction réels ou virtuels et réseaux avec lesquels ces développeurs de jeux, promoteurs et joueurs fonctionnent – y compris les studios de jeux, les lieux de divertissement, les pôles technologiques, les conventions de jeux, et les groupes d’intérêt SNS en ligne et chaînes vidéo – et les façons dont ces espaces peuvent soutenir l’émergence, le développement et l’augmentation de la distribution de jeux kényans qui incorporent le contexte culturel local et le folklore régional.
En utilisant des modèles anthropologiques d’entretiens ethnographiques et les méthodologies de culture visuelle informées par les méthodes de recherche sur la conception et l’analyse des tendances, nous examinons les caractéristiques du jeu au Kenya (qu’elles soient esthétiques, culturelles ou organisationnelles) qui se distinguent par rapport aux formats plus traditionnels et dominants occidentaux.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 In the context of this article, less attention is given to the manipulation of code and data sets and hardware acceleration techniques, although these too can be considered part of the design activity associated with games development.
2 Mc Allister cites Doug Kellner’s multiperspectival approach in cultural studies as an approach that can be adopted when looking at games, i.e., ‘the production and political economy of culture; textual analysis and critique of its artifacts; and study of audience reception and the uses of media/cultural products’ (Kellner Citation2002, 50).
3 According to a BBC Business article ‘Africa’s games makers dream of exporting to the world’, accessed on 13/09/16 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33335555.
4 Technological leapfrogging refers to a notion that suggests the rapid movement through and across newer technological systems without going through intermediary steps.
5 The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and the MEST Incubator program provide training, investment and mentoring for aspiring technology entrepreneurs in Africa.
6 Sheng is a Swahili dialect originating among the urban underclass of Nairobi, Kenya, and primarily used as a language of urban youths.
7 As seen at http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/arts/mengo-underground-fight-club-osborne-macharia/index.html.
8 At the time of writing this article, Urban Design Kings was in the process of renaming their studio ‘Avandu’. Avandu Vosi translates to ‘all the people’ in the Luhyia language. According to Salim Busuru: ‘Although we focus on African stories, we felt the name represents our desire to show the world, through our stories, that we are more similar than different.’
9 Available to view on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px-qVZeAKUc.
10 ‘Afrofuturism’ was coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in the mid-90s who affixed the term to the growing artistic movement and critiques arising in the 1950s and continuing to the present day that followed narratives of people of African descent in sci-fi, futuristic treaties Reynaldo and Jones Citation2016. The approach was pioneered in the USA by the sci-fi novelist Ralph Ellison and popularized by the jazz musician Sun Ra (http://ieet.org).
11 According to a BBC Business article ‘Africa’s games makers dream of exporting to the world’, accessed on 13/09/16 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33335555.
12 A local area network (LAN) party is a gathering of people with computers or compatible game consoles, between which they establish a LAN connection between the devices using a router or switch, primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer video games together.
13 Available to view at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugwZtOOCeJGT44PLkSdwNQ .
14 As an example, the YouTuber Nerd Side included a video posted in 2014 with a shortlist of his top Kenyan gamers who were uploading videos that documented their game play. Available to view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjYePwGCIQw.
15 Available to view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SvhF2FCDyQ.
16 For coverage on the event as published on the iHub website, see http://ihub.co.ke/blogs/19291/introducing-blizzard-s-hamilton-chu-to-nairobi-s-gamers.
17 Websites can be viewed at http://www.thegrowthhub.com/ , http://www.praekelt.org/, http://mlab.co.ke/, http://nailab.co.ke/, http://www.88mph.ac/ and http://www.ilabafrica.ac.ke/.
18 In Kenya and neighbouring nations, matatu or matatus are privately owned minibuses used for both inter- and intra-city travel, often decorated with famous or slogans and sayings.
19 On 13 May 2016, a man identified as Saleh Wanjala (later known as the ‘Kenyan James Bond’) clung to an airborne helicopter carrying the body of murdered Kenyan businessman Jacob Juma in Bungoma, Kenya. A mobile game has been developed based on this ordeal called Bungoma Hangman. The game involves a man hanging from a helicopter who dodges birds and electricity poles and ‘powers up’ by eating local foods such as ugali, kuku and sukuma wiki.
20 Serious games is the term that is used to refer to the games whose primary function is not simply entertainment. These can include educational games, documentary games and/or games that have a social and political engagement.
21 Unlike in Casablanca, Morocco (Makuch Citation2017), where international leading French company UbiSoft Games had been running from 1998 (Callus Citation2017). By June 2016, however, Gamespot.com ran a story on the closure of UbiSoft’s Casablanca studio, citing economic crisis and the ‘evolution of the games market’ as the reason for the closure.