Thursday 28th February 2013, Madison
Square Garden in Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. I reached that amazing gaming
venue more than an hour late and was a little bit scared that Bacely Yorobi -
the organizer of the 2013 Game Camp in Abidjan - get pissed with me. But he
welcomed me with a smile, and that’s how started one of the most innovative
events happening in Abidjan.
This year was the second edition of the Game Camp. The
idea behind this event is to put together all African people, regardless of
their age or their job profile, who are interested in the industry of video
games. They can be simply gamers, programmers, designers, animation
specialists, or any other professional who can contribute to the establishment
of an industry of video games. Africans do develop great video games, and it is
a fact that there is no well-known African industry dedicated to video games,
like EA, Activision, Ubisoft and so on. As it is a new concept, the aim so far
is to create a community of people interested in the project. Once this is
done, we can think of how to practically create the industry. Bacely Yorobi is
the man who set everything up, and we can say that he did a great job. After
last year’s success, four other African cities embraced the concept. Therefore,
the 2013 Game Camp happened simultaneously in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Lomé
(Togo), Dakar (Senegal), Saint Louis (Senegal) and Tanger (Morocco). Now that’s
what I call success!
The first two days happened in Madison Square Garden,
a video games showroom in Cocody. On Thursday, we introduced the concept of the
games to the participants and asked them what they think about it. The response
was positive. The theme for the first night was TEKKEN, one of the best fighting
video games ever, and the least I can say is that participants really knew the
subject and enjoyed the discussion. Then, we had a Skype conversation with
Farid from Algeria, who told us about the concept “webdays” to bring African
tech professionals together, and also encouraged us in our work. We concluded
the first day with a projection of a movie: “IndieGame: The movie”. It was a
very inspiring movie about independent programmers who created several popular
games on their own.
We met the second day at the same time at the same
venue for a maximum of entertainment! After watching the beginning of HALO 4,
we just took the joysticks and participants showed their skills on FIFA 12,
NARUTO and TEKKEN 6. No need to mention that I was the best at all of games.
AMN center welcomed us for the last day of the 2013
Game Camp. The affluence was much more than the first two days since it was a
Saturday. Several Ivorian professionals including Necemon Yai joined us on a
Google Hangout, and gave us informative and inspirational speeches about what
they do in the world of technology and Internet. Participants got to express
their doubts and ask questions to the professionals and received necessary
guidance. After a refreshing lunch break, participants got the opportunity to
attend workshops. Two workshops were provided: one about drawing techniques and
the other one about computer games making. Participants definitely learned a
lot and were got out of there with a lot of ideas for the future. We all got a
stylish Game Camp T-shirt which made the last photograph even more beautiful.
Satisfaction is the feeling that we all felt as we
left AMN on Saturday. We created awareness, we enriched our knowledge, we
enlarged our network, and we increased the number of members of the Game
community. Can’t wait for the 2014 Game Camp which will certainly be a major
event in the Abidjan area!
No comments:
Post a Comment