I grew up in the typical “strict African home” setting. My Dad- a mathematics teacher (you can imagine the severity of the strictness now, right?), was all about getting good grades and spending less time on TV. Not like we never had time for fun, just that our fun was everything but movies, video games, street football and all the other cool kid stuff. So you can imagine how lost I felt every time I was in the company of my friends when they discussed these things I never did. When I could, I’d sneak to my neighbour’s place to see Bakugan and Naruto, but these cut-and-join scenes I saw never made complete sense to me.
Well, adolescence brought my first feeling of freedom, and I could finally do what I wanted, to an extent. I had already lost interest in Anime (Thanks to my Mathematics Dad), and then I found this freedom in gaming. Mobile gaming at the time, though.
I’d started gaming from the snake xenzia on the old Nokia phones and nurtured that love until Immortals, and Samurai Jack for Mobile phones were created.
Playing these games, I found a new world different from the one I’d grown in. With every new game played, I learnt of a new civilization, not caring whether they were made fictional or real. I studied these game civilisations to get past the challenges. Slowly and with every new level, these stories found a place in my heart to stay.
Stories of the minotaur (immortals), of Samurais who only wore white clothing (Samurai x), of the evil Shao Khan (mortal Kombat), of drug Lords and gangsters (gangster Auto), and Aunt May (Spiderman).
These stories embedded in games formed what my adolescent mind learnt to call truth.
You see, stories aren’t just about some dope narrative sequences that explain why characters do what they do. Beyond creating characters and advancing the plot, stories determine what we believe to be true or not.
Stories create memories, build interest, and influence the thought patterns of readers. When done well, stories could be tools to foster change and engineer a reinvention.
Where Africa Comes In
Imagine a game set in Africa, with African Characters, telling the story of African civilisation.
Imagine a game by Africans telling and retelling African stories for Africans and the world; stories that emphasise that we were a people before British subjugation and colonisation.
Games that tell stories of Africa in pre-colonial times as a thriving nation with sophisticated governments; deemphasise our affinity with monkeys and apes and classify us as a race-worthy of respect.
This article seeks to ask questions and provide answers that have been carefully ignored by gamers and developers.
Storytelling in Video Games
In video games, stories have a simple function: to compel emotions, get the audience involved, and make the actions more explicit. Stories in video games, keep the player involved in the game, feeling what the character feels and deciding what fate to create for himself.
A recent statistic on game completion shows that 80% of games are abandoned by players before they reach the end. The statistic further reveals that games with strong narratives fare better in terms of completion than platform games that only require carrying out tasks.
The logical explanation for the statistic above is simple. Humans are interactive beings and want to interact as much as possible with the things they do. They want to be engaged in things that mirror their experiences either directly or indirectly and be able to decide their fate.
With an understanding of the importance of stories in games, developers have tried as much as possible to evolve various narrative styles into game development. Today, every video game has some kind of story to keep players eager to finish.
Every game makes use of any of the four narrative styles below:
- Linear Narrative Style
- String of Pearls
- Fully Branching Style
- The Amusement Park Method
To further understand these methods listed above, click here.
How Storytelling In Games Can Be A Tool For The African Story
In the last held annual Africa Games Week- the largest gathering of developers, content creators, gamers, coders, designers, investors, and publishers, In Africa- held in Capetown, event co-founder Nick Hall said many publishers say they want African-made content.
Africa used to lag in global game statistics, but over recent years, we have seen growth in these figures. NewZoo, a leading game company, says that in 2021 alone, gamers in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 77 million to 186 million, with South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, leading the boom.
However, most of the games in the market are from America, Europe and Japan, with content from Africa too little to be seen.
The consequence of this is that our story as Africans is brilliantly sidelined from the digital world of games. The African uniqueness is lost in games, and for a generation, it might soon become normal for Africans to not dove African protagonists on gaming consoles.
When I say African character, I don’t mean a black-skin-toned character with curly hair and some tribal marks.
The Ideal African-Themed Games
Jay Shapiro is the founder of Usiku Games, a Kenya-based social impact gaming company and the creator of Seedballs
Seedballs is a game aimed at replenishing Kenya’s lost forests in the semi-arid north of the country.
In Seedballs, players drop seeds for planting trees, rather than bombs to destroy things. At the end of the game, players are congratulated on the number of virtual trees they have planted and are asked if they would like to turn those virtual trees into actual trees for the Kenyan forest.
They are urged to donate one Kenyan shilling (just 0.008 of a dollar) per virtually planted tree, and the money raised is used to plant the trees.
This is an example of an African-themed game.
African-themed games should be set in Africa, with African characters as protagonists, with native African names, explaining contemporary and past African issues.
African-themed games should explore pre-colonial African civilizations of Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and every African nation that lives and breathes.
African-themed games should narrate the adventures of the Transatlantic slave trade in Africa and how heroic Africa fought hard to resist domination.
African-themed games should let us relive these experiences and decide on our consoles, what we would rather have had.
But African-themed games should not circle our ugly pasts alone, they should progress to our present and help us live the future.
This is probably how more Africans can enjoy gaming, sitting in front of huge screens with consoles to decide what Africa should have been and probably leaving those screens armed with the right stories to become better Africans.
A Call For African Developers, Storytellers and Gamers
Gameverse Africa Conference 22 is an annual game festival in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, organized by Gameverse Africa.
Gameverse Africa Conference is scheduled to hold on Saturday 16th November 2022- a gaming festival to promote and build a strong game ecosystem in Africa and beyond.
The conference would feature eSport, workshop, game showcase, history and gamer stuff.
We aim to expand the gaming industry in Africa and promote a more inclusive representation in the global gaming industry.
Africa has one of the richest cultures in the world, and what happens when we start developing and making content, we drop our history and focus on making it look like the West or East.
The sub-theme for this year’s conference is Old Meets New.
Conclusion:
The African story is worth telling and retelling. It is worth passing down to the next generation in the most interesting ways possible.
From behind a Nintendo console, an Xbox, a play station and even virtual reality gaming models, the African story can be told.
Kindly share this article with every African, for Africa.
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Chidi Light @ Gameverse Africa
