Andrew Kaggia is a hardcore gamer, and he is using his passion for gaming, along with his skills in animation, to create local content, set in places that Kenyans (his first market) are familiar with, and telling stories that they can relate to.

The 27-year-old animator and game designer is the founder of Black Division Games, an entertainment and publishing company that is behind Nairobi X, Kenya’s first locally developed first-person shooter game.

The game is set in Nairobi in the year 2030, and features Otero, a member of the elite Recce Squad, as the protagonist. Otero is the sole survivor from a team tasked with fighting extra-terrestrials who have taken over Nairobi’s central business district, and his main objective is to finish the task that his team was assigned: Secure the city and repel the alien invaders.

The development of Nairobi X took place over the course of one year in Black Division’s game studio located on Nairobi’s Ngong Road, at a cost of approximately Ksh100,000 ($1,000) for the mobile game, and Ksh250,000 ($2,600) for the PC game.

Kaggia and his team of four modified the storyline, characters and plot extensively, with the end result being an intricate rendering of Nairobi’s landmarks in 3D. The starting point for all the action is the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, with the game taking the player around Nairobi while fighting off the invading aliens.

The game has the look and feel of any international game, but still manages to maintain a Kenyan perspective thanks to localisation that grounds the story in Nairobi. The rendering of the buildings in the game is from photographs that Kaggia took of various Nairobi landmarks.

The soundtrack of the PC version includes music by Kenyan musician Juliani. The aim, according to Aram Laloui who manages strategy for Black Division Games, was to build on a shared experience that Kenyans have while drawing on influences and references from other games, making it easier to relate to on a cultural level.

One particularly interesting feature is the use of sheng (Kenyan slang that mixes English, Swahili, Hindi and indigenous languages) in the prompts on the mobile version of the game. When Otero is running out of ammunition, the player is alerted with an occasional “Ongeza risasi buda” (boss, you’re running out of bullets), and when his “health” is failing him, the player gets a “health iko low” (your health is low) warning.

Nairobi X is meant to appeal to both hardcore and casual gamers. The first-person shooter format has drawn comparisons with games such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honour.

From the responses at the launch of the game, Kaggia noted that there is strong demand for local content in this form, which is evidence that animation is a viable career option, and it can stand on its own as an industry.

Following the launch of the mobile version on June 16, demand was so high that the server handling download requests crashed after about three hours, prompting an early release on Google Play Store the next day. The PC version was launched on June 29, featuring an expanded universe with the player able to move around more and even drive several vehicles.

So far response has been positive, with over 3,000 downloads of the mobile version from Google Play Store, where it has an average rating of four stars.

Online reviewers have also praised the game’s setting in the heart of Nairobi, along with the use of sheng to make it a truly Kenyan game. However, some have found the game’s controls and navigation a little clunky, and the gameplay is repetitive on the mobile version, due to the need to tailor the game for phones of all sizes.

The gaming market in Kenya can only be profiled as consisting of hardcore and casual gamers. Hardcore gamers are interested in features such as a multiplayer option over a local network where players can play in teams or against each other.

Self-taught

The mobile version of the game is more popular with casual gamers, and people looking for light entertainment on their phones. To encourage interaction, players are able to share pictures of their progress through the game’s social media accounts.

“The fact that we had to develop the game for multiple platforms, for mobile and for PC, presented unique challenges. First, the mobile version had to be compatible with as many devices as possible, meaning that it had to be small enough to be playable on low-end devices without affecting the quality of visuals or gameplay,” Kaggia noted.

“That took away valuable development time, but we made sure that we focused on making the game experience the best we could for players on both platforms.”

Kaggia’s skills in 3D animation are largely self-taught. He started through reading and practising on a computer 14 years ago. His family was not entirely convinced about his chosen career path, but they have gradually warmed up to it.

“When I got into animation” he recalls, “there was hardly anyone teaching it in school, let alone learning. My family thought that it would be a passing phase, and that I would return to a more conventional career path. However, I think I have managed to convince them that it is possible to make a career out of it. Not only that, we have been able to create jobs for the people on the team that came on board to help develop the game. Already, Nairobi X has garnered interest from overseas, and there are plans underway for a sequel, meaning that there is still more potential to be realised.”

Monetisation

One major hurdle to the development of games and a gaming industry in Kenya has been how to make money out of it.

“Games are expensive because they cost money to make,” Aram Laloui added.

“It is still a business, and the developers hope to make enough money to support other ventures and also to pay the bills. That’s why we have partnered with various corporate sponsors whose products appear as in-game content. However, games are often seen as easy targets when it comes to piracy because they can be copied and replicated without a trace. One day you can launch your game at a certain price, then the next day you walk around in town and see a bootleg copy on sale at a fraction of what you were charging, completely cutting out and denying a source of income to the developer who has worked so hard. To prevent this, we have made the game as affordable as possible, with the PC version retailing at Ksh100 ($1.02), and the mobile version will sell at Ksh30 ($0.30).”

Kaggia hopes that by localising the narrative of African stories using games as a medium, we can have meaningful conversations about our culture and how it is represented.

“There’s no point in having games created in Nairobi but set in some distant place, New York for example, featuring characters that Kenyans cannot relate with,” he said.

“Additionally, rather than having narratives that are based in an African setting, a lot of the content that comes from abroad is often skewed. With the games and content we are producing, we hope to reverse this trend.

“Video game characters have the ability to become pop culture icons,” Kaggia opines.

“The character Lara Croft started out in the Tomb Raider video games, but she has since been featured in films and some have argued that she is an icon for feminism. I hope that this character we have created, Otero, can also become an icon in his own right.”

According to Kaggia, there is potential in the local games development scene, but it needs to be nurtured.

“The technology scene in Nairobi has revolved around apps that serve a purely functional purpose, for example education, agriculture and mobile money. However, there is a growing need for games and entertainment. This is where we come in,” he said.

“By creating games that incorporate local content and talent, built to international quality and standards, we hope that we can spark the growth of a game development industry in Kenya and the region as well.”