Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

"they've been waiting for guys like me to do the hardest work and rebuild the game ecology in Africa."

After announcing an investment of 300000 euros in June this year, a new game research and development center will take root in Senegal.

Through multi-party cooperation, Masseka Studios, the French Embassy in Senegal, the Senegalese accelerated Entrepreneurship Mission (DER) and Dakar Studio Kayfo Games plan to use the money to build a hybrid base center of incubators and R & D studios in the Senegalese capital, so as to promote the development of the Senegalese gaming industry and enhance its influence in West Africa. As soon as September, local developers will have the opportunity to be invited to go there for training.

As the leader of the project, Teddy Kosko is a professional engineer who founded game studio Masseka in France in 2018. At the same time, he is also the founder of the African game store Gara.

Masseka Studios is based in Toulouse, France, and their goal is to become a game bridge between Africa and Europe. "I worked in the game industry for about nine years, before which I was an engineer in the aerospace field." "I was born in the Central African Republic and left my country in 2012 to study in France," Kosko said. since then, I have noticed that many people do not really know the African continent. "

"to tell the story of Africa, I started making games, founded the first game company dedicated to spreading African culture in France, and two years later began to build Gara, a platform similar to Google Play stores in Africa. Because Africans are not used to using credit cards, Gara integrates all the payment channels commonly used there."

According to Kosoko, by taking advantage of the new game center in Dakar, he hopes to create games that better meet the needs of African players, while building a sustainable research and development ecosystem. The idea came to Kosovo last year when he consolidated Gara's partnership by doing business with several telecoms companies there.

"in Africa, telecom companies are like banks, and all transactions have to be done through them." So I wanted to speed up my cooperation with the local telecom company. I met a friend who worked in the French Embassy in Senegal and was in charge of technology-related work, and I talked to him a lot. The man, who had previously worked at the French embassy in South Africa, knew South Africa's gaming ecosystem like the back of his hand and asked me if I was interested in building a similar ecosystem here. He contacted me in February and asked me to write a project proposal to be submitted to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "

The partnership was formalized by the French Embassy in Senegal and Masseka at an annual conference on innovation and entrepreneurship held in Paris in June this year. Kosoko revealed that he initially proposed to set up an incubator company, but he did not approve.

"if you just create an incubator, it will be very difficult for the company to achieve sustainable development because such an ecosystem is too unfriendly for the local people. I prefer to build a center that is not only like a game studio, but also has incubation function. We will organize game development competitions, come up with some ideas, select the best developers and art and provide contracts for them to receive training in the studio, and then make games. "

"so my goal is to set up a game development studio to produce a lot of content based on Senegalese and West African cultures. in addition, because we have our own distribution platform, developers can also use this content to make money."

Kosko added that by analyzing the trajectory of the product, Senegalese developers can also access and share gaming industry data across West Africa and build a real ecosystem on that basis to form a virtuous circle.

"our vision is to make the center sustainable. In the final analysis, the revenue generated by the games produced by developers will support our long-term activities, and everyone in the studio will become employees of the center. The center belongs to Masseka at this stage, but in the future, if I can successfully make a profit, it will completely separate from my company and become independent, and all members will continue to work there."

The French embassy accepted Kosovo's offer and even decided to invest more money. But in the start-up phase, the French embassy will only invest $150000 in the project. "they told me they would double the funding and have a year and a half to prove that it is entirely feasible to build an ecosystem in Senegal." Kosoko recalls.

Many African developers have introduced digital currency into games as a means of payment to solve the most important profit problem, Kosoko further explained that the Senegalese game industry is currently made up of "informal" and "formal" parts.

"in Africa, games generate a lot of revenue for telecom companies, and what telecom companies do is put games from Europe and Asia online and make money from them. This informal ecosystem is good for telecom companies, but not for local game developers."

"in the formal ecosystem, Senegal has about four independent studios, mainly outsourcing. We also have thousands of game developers, but they lack organizational structure and do not join any company. These people like playing games and fiddling with Mini Game on their notebooks. Senegal does not have a real game ecosystem, we do not have the ability to develop large-scale games, and we do not have an adequate budget like our counterparts in countries such as Nigeria. "

The completion of the new R & D center will not only provide local developers with opportunities to get together, but also provide production tools and training opportunities to help them move towards professionalization. "A lot of Senegalese are trying to develop games, but at a low level, they are basically self-learning online. We plan to hire lecturers and offer a large number of courses to provide more systematic training for these developers to help them improve." Kosoko said.

At the same time, the center will also work with local studios to develop games, and after the R & D team meets the requirements, it will also have the opportunity to work with European companies.

Kosko developed his first African culture-based board game "Kissoro Tribal Game" in Senegal, where developers had to overcome many challenges, including frequent power outages, hardware shortages, lack of funds, and so on, in order to complete the game development and bring it to market. " Studios have to spend money on distribution because in Africa, it is difficult to find distributors suitable for local teams. Currently, Gara is one of the first game distributors in Africa, focusing on serving African developers. South Africa also has Carry1st, but they rarely sign up for African games. "

"in addition, I would also like to say that in these countries, developers do not have government support most of the time. France, Germany and many other European countries, including South Africa, provide subsidies to help developers create games because the government understands the importance of the game industry. therefore, this is another difficulty that West African developers may face."

"as far as this project is concerned, we have the support of the Senegalese delegation to accelerate entrepreneurship. DER, one of the government agencies responsible for promoting entrepreneurship, worked with Unity as early as 2019, but failed because they didn't know how to use Unity and how to promote the tool in universities. Now, by participating in the construction of the R & D center, they will have the opportunity to try again to promote the development of the game industry in Senegal. "

According to Kosoko, DER will provide a complete office for the new center, that is, the full-floor facilities of DER's headquarters in Dakar.

In September, Julian Helbin, the boss of Kayfo Games, will organize a game development competition to kick-start the project and tap new talent who can join the center. "We plan to conduct a market research next month to study the game markets in Senegal, C ô te d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, and release a report on the results."

Kosko also talked to us about the future of the African gaming industry. "the gaming industry is accelerating here." "when I started making games for Africa, African games were not an interesting topic and very few people talked about it," Kosovo smiles. "Today, a lot of people are interested in games made by African teams, and almost all the big companies think African games are promising in the future, but most of them don't want to invest, waiting for guys like me to do the hardest work, and then they'll be interested."

"if you want this day to come early, you have to rebuild the game ecosystem because telecom companies have taken money from the gaming industry over the past 20 years without investing. In order to build a new ecosystem, we need to set up studios, incubators and produce a lot of games, as well as focus on college education to learn how to use tools such as Unity, unreal engines, and so on, which is something we have to do in the next few years. "

This article is compiled from: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-teddy-kossoko-is-championing-the-games-industry-in-senegal

Original title: "How Teddy Kossoko is championing the games industry in Senegal"

Original author: Marie Dealessandri

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.