Travelling across Lagos is like tackling an obstacle course, one packed with corrupt police officers, gaping potholes and badly driven, banana-yellow “danfo” buses — not to mention the traffic jams that appear from nowhere in the middle of the day.
So it comes as little surprise that there are now video games imitating life in Nigeria’s sweltering mega city.
In Gidi Run, moustachioed traffic cop Musa sticks out his hand for a 20 naira ($0.06) bribe.
A danfo bus crashes through the roadblock and there is an ensuing chase through the crowded streets of Lagos.
The Android mobile phone game belongs to the “endless runner” genre made globally popular by US game Temple Run, where the character keeps sprinting until he or she fails to turn a corner or clear an obstacle.
Gamsole, the creator of Gidi Run, is one of a small but growing number of video game design companies based in Lagos.
Most of the games are for use on smartphones and many also have a Nigerian twist.
ChopUp, another local developer, has made 30 such games in the past six years.
Monkey Post is a typical football game, except the play happens in the streets, as is the case for millions of people across the developing world, instead of a stadium.
Jagun: Clash of Kingdoms is inspired by the classic arcade game Space Invaders, but the player defends the fictional, medieval empire of Jagunlabi in Nigeria’s Yoruba region from marauding intruders.
ChopUp has also made games based on the deadly Ebola epidemic that swept across west Africa in 2014-15 and the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency plaguing Nigeria’s north-east.
Revenues from the domestic video games industry are expected to rise by an average annual rate of 16 per cent for the next four years, according to PwC, the consulting firm.
The community around it is growing too. Gamers event Lagos Comic Con attracted a reported 5,000 people last year. However, if those growth rates are met, Nigeria’s gaming industry will still be worth just $85.6m in annual turnover by 2021. That is smaller than the gaming market in Kenya, whose population is around a quarter of Nigeria’s, and a drop in the ocean of the $116bn global industry.
Mobile phone apps are expected to grow as a proportion of the market, outpacing the expansion in console and PC-based games. However, local developers have to compete with global smash hits like US game Candy Crush Saga, for users that rarely make in-app purchases.
For developers such as Ali Akdogan, designing distinctly Nigerian output is a strategy for standing out at home and abroad. Akdogan’s combat game Throne of Gods allows users to fight as African deities such as Akonadi, a Ghanaian goddess of justice, and Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder.
Although it gained positive reviews, the game failed to gain traction in the crowded Google Play app store.
Akdogan plans to re-release it and is convinced Nigerian developers should remain distinctive. “Starting up [we] need identity,” he says. “Without that, we’re just like everyone else.” Zubair Abubakar, the co-founder of ChopUp, agrees.
“There are millions of games out there that already have, for lack of a better word, English storylines or American storylines,” he says. “We believe the world hasn’t experienced gaming from an African perspective.”
ChopUp’s games are inspired by everyday experiences that resonate across Africa, says Abubakar.
Its most successful release remains its first, Danfo, a 2D game for older models of mobile phones, which involves driving a bus around Lagos.
Similar buses serve cities across the continent, from Kenya’s “matatus” to Ghana’s “tro-tros”.
“They might not be coloured yellow, but it’s the same experience — the same angry bus driver and the very funny conductor trying to get passengers and make a living,” says Abubakar.
Yet not all Nigerian developers believe in creating games that resonate specifically with their fellow citizens.
“People play games because they just want to have fun, not because they want to know where it’s from,” says Abiola Olaniran, Gamsole’s chief executive.
He argues that Japanese games, for example, are recognisable as such because of the style of their art work, not because of their themes. “I wouldn’t want to develop content that’s specifically for Nigerians alone without a reason — maybe there is a partnership, a brand is trying to reach an audience,” says Olaniran.
After representing Nigeria in a Microsoft technology competition while he was a student, Olaniran started designing games for the US company’s Windows mobile phone platform.
With few developers bothering to make games for Microsoft, Gamsole’s titles notched up 10m downloads from all over the world before the platform was shut down last year.
Since then, Olaniran has targeted other customers. Gamsole has designed a financial literacy game, working with a Nigerian bank.
It has also formed a partnership with MTN, which operates across 24 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Gidi Run was launched with MTN in Nigeria in 2016 and is now played by 100,000 paying subscribers.
Striking deals with telecoms companies across Africa is a proven distribution strategy.
Mobile phone users pay a subscription fee to obtain unlimited usage of a selection of games. But these distribution networks come at a price for designers. Gaming companies say that they are unable to negotiate better than a 40 per cent share of revenue from the tie-up.
“[Telecoms companies] have most of the power,” says Olaniran. Many Nigerian developers do not have a marketing budget large enough to make their game stand out from the hundreds uploaded on the Google Play and Apple app stores every day.
However, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa using mobile phones is forecast to hit half a billion by 2020, according to GSMA, the trade organisation for the global telecoms industry. For Nigeria’s nascent gaming studios, forging partnerships with telecoms groups may be the only game in town.
Rachel Savage, FT
