Disclaimer: Views and Opinions in this article are of the writer.
Activisions recent success in Call of Duty Blackops 6 has shown the Nigerian game development scene how to tackle some of the issues which continously plagued it throughout the entirety of 2024. The scene which is home to over 20 indie studios experienced a lot of positive developments this year, alongside relative industries such as esports and web3 which all hit new landmarks in their respective developments and are currently projected to garner growth, foster even more collaborations and integrations geared towards enhancing player experiences by 2025. But there were troubling developments which consistently plagued developers in 2024, and Activision’s recent success in Black Ops 6’s launch clearly shows local developers how to deal some of these problems.
First, let’s explore what shaped the Nigerian game development scene in 2024.
A YEAR OF exciting events and title launches
New immersive and engaging games were released this year, some of which embraced and attained global standards in game mechanics, gameplay and graphics in their respective genres, titles such as Lieutenant. Ahmed by six path studios and Adventurers: Mobile by Raven Illusion Studios launched and provided players with immersive gameplay, dynamic graphics and well writen plots. Additionally several gaming conferences and expos e.g the Africacomicade, Game expo by Gameverse and the CAGE 24 by Gameevo were held in different states in the country, providing gamers with exciting LAN esports tournaments and opportunities to connect with their fellow gamers. For Developers, these events represented opportunities to get their games in front of the masses, test out innovative game technologies, connect and share resources with top studios and personnels from Africa and beyond.
But it certainly wasn’t all shine for Local studios this year; old problems and newer issues which were not properly addressed adversely affected developers, making it rather difficult for them to build and release titles. Some of these problems are inherent given the current development stage of the scene, whereas some are globally recognized issues affecting studios of all calibre and repute since the dawn of gaming.
insights, market challenges and bottlenecks.
As someone deeply invested in the gaming industry, I had the opportunity to speak with several respected figures and representatives, including Louis Whyte Jonah (Games Advocate and Founder of Gameverse Africa) and John Ikpeme (CEO of Dash Game Studios), among others. These conversations took place during different episodes of the ‘Esports Stakeholders Podcast’ as well as through private interviews. Through these discussions, I gained valuable insights into the market, such as;
- The fact that the scene received significantly more media coverage, and the increased publicity helped studios in reaching wider audiences.
- Financing still remains a major issue holding even reputable studios from creating global centric games capable of amassing millions of downloads.
Armed with these insights, I have classified these problems into two categories, Localized Challenges and Global Industry Challenges.
Global Challenges
With global industry challenges, we look at problems such as community development, monetization issues, video game piracy and changing player expectations which plague all studios everywhere and gaming giants such as Xbox, Sony, ubisoft, Activision and Electronic arts till this day.
Localized Challenges
With Localized challenges, we closely examine unique issues plaguing developers due to the current state of infrastructures, policies and other socio-economic factors in Nigeria. Inclusive but not limited to;
1. limited access to funding due to Investor sentiments,
2. Extremely high costs of acquiring crucial hardware and game development softwares
3. A severe lack of Partnerships and Collaborations
4. and a common perception of local games as below par compared to international titles by local audiences.
These region specific problems created a tight bottleneck for the development of studios in the country this year.
UNITY IS A PROBLEM
Perhaps, the greatest problem facing these studios is the absence of strategic partnership between studios within and outside the ecosystem even when It is a well established fact in gaming and other businesses of the world, that the right kinds of partnerships often mean the success or failure of a project.
To further buttress this critical point, it would interest you to know that more than half of the world’s most beloved game titles were co-developed between two or more studios. Take for example, Activision’s COD Black Ops 6 which was released this year and quickly became one of more liked COD titles of recent. This Title was Co-developed between Treyarch studios and Raven Software, additional development support was provided by Activision Central Design, Beenox, Demonware, Infinity ward, High moon studios and Sledgehammer games. Commercial partnerships for this game even saw collaborations that included Monster Energy, Corsair, TCL and Thurdark among others.
We rarely saw multi studio developed games this year from Local developers, what we got instead were games lacking in post launch contents and collaborative in-game events between studios and partners for players to partake in.
However some of these companies are aware of these problems and have made significant efforts to tackle them. On the 15th episode of the Esports stakeholders Podcast, we sat down and discussed with Louis Whyte Jonah and Osinachi-okoh Leslie (Founder of yelobyte) on how it could be very beneficial for Developers in severely limited states and regions if Regional Networks were unlocked and allowed Devs increased access to information, discussion with support partners and access to more game development technologies through the hosting of conferences and Expos like the GameVerse Expo which was held in Port Harcourt, South Eastern Nigeria.
More recently, when we spoke with the CEO of LogicDev studios on what kind of results would be expected if more studios collaborated together to launch more game titles,
He said “great results, as long as there is more trust, patience and competence.”
This statement suggested to me that there are problems in the ecosystem related to actual developer competence, trust and studio patience. However, there is a silver lining here, and that is because the usual first step in problem solving is Identification.
GROWTH IN 2025!
It goes without saying then, that the game development scene in Nigeria is still experiencing Infantile problems and is therefore nowhere close to Running, but there is an abundance of talent and creativity in this industry. Furthermore, this is an industry situated in the largest mobile gaming market in the whole of Africa, with an ever growing penetration of internet and smartphone users, Data from the African game industry Report by Maliyo studios showed that internet and mobile adoption were at 35.5% and 78% respectively, with a strong potential to grow even further in 2025. These numbers can only point to opportunities for increased download numbers, community development, financing and strategic partnerships and are all indicators for an industry poised for growth.
https://www.callofduty.com/blackops6
Last Updated on January 6, 2025
