On the 29th - 31st October, the West African Gaming Expo (
WAGE) hosted a number of different players in and around the gaming industry and related educational fields at Pinefield School in Lekki, Lagos.
Spread across two days, the event included specialised lectures and presentations given around the technology, and the specific hurdles and obstacles that are faced with this regional context. Some presentations included a focus upon local content such as
Geniigames - and their educational games that promotes local language and culture, and representative Zuibar Abubakar from
Chopup games on wider perspectives on game development.
With game developers as young as 10 years old, the
Centre4Tech showcased the outcomes from their summer camps that run with young children and adolescents interested in this field. Their attendance also included presentations on gaming and the projects that their organisation offers.
The event also included showcasing different hardware, including the OculusRift and
Google VR set Cardboard.
And there was also room for fun where delegates and attendees played their favourite games.
One other great find at the event was making the acquaintance of Tolu from the Podcast Channel,
Tao of Otaku, where you can find regular podcasts of '
African perspectives on comics, video games, tv shows, anime and all things geeky'.
The WAGE website was redesigned in 2016 and can now be viewed at: http://www.africgames.com/
Below is an article I wrote for the website on local content in 2015.
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The subject of local content for local audiences has been an ongoing
concern within different post-colonial spaces as there remains an inevitable
engagement with the discourses on hegemony and dominant cultural brokers in the
field of animation, film, games and popular entertainment at large. Therefore
when WAGE2015 (West African Gaming Expo, Lagos) introduced the themed focus on
‘local’ production in gaming in West Africa, this discussion was bound to arise
across a range of aspects within this field, whether in the context of
infrastructure, production (artistic and technical), distribution or exhibition.
How can different parties negotiate these tensions in a transnational
context of production and distribution? Global players in the market
increasingly appear to be ‘setting up shop’ across different countries outside
of the West, establishing studios and creative hubs. Furthermore their market
dominance would suggest that they are favourably positioned as ‘trend-setters’.
A counter narrative to this is to be found in the utopian views of Web 2.0,
that technological moment that heralded in a new wave of ‘prod-users’ who
were/are able to upload their films and animations on YouTube or develop and
sell their apps in this global marketplace (Bruns, 2006). Still one may argue
this vision belies the continued difficulties that independent producers face. Somewhere
in the midst of this minefield of discourses I interjected with a small window
onto a handful of African animation/multi-media artists who move within these
transnational spaces and in a cosmopolitan sense presenting work that re-frames
the ‘exotic’ to different audiences.
These artists appropriate an aesthetic, narrative, and form that
stems from range of spaces (real and virtual). Their content resonates with
local audiences who are able to recognize the motifs and excite foreign
audiences who view these images as different, other and exotic. The term ‘exotic’ is not without its own historical and
problematic associations – and here I wish to propose that it is this precise 'othering' quality that these artists are capitalizing upon, turning the table so
to speak, to re-present versions of content that can be viewed and enjoyed by a
range of audiences across different contexts albeit for different reasons.
Artists like Nigeria’s own Ebele Okoye or Kenneth Coker who work and live
between Africa and Europe or the US, are constantly creating work that whilst
greatly inspired by Yoruba mythology, as one example, can also incorporate motifs
from North African architecture in sci-fi worlds with a cast of characters that
look like they belong alongside any of the Marvel crew. Kenneth (Shof) Coker’s
recent kickstarter project was made in collaboration with his siblings Shobo
and Funola Coker. ‘Outcasts of Jupiter’ (http://tapastic.com/episode/65786)
is a graphic novel that is set in the future with a cast of characters
befitting a sci-fi context. The drawings collapse unusual elements together by
illustrating the familiar ‘exotic’ spaces of dying and tanning pits on rooftops
in Fez in Morocco, for example, alongside technologies that could be easily
placed in retro-futuristic American sci-fi.
This combination of different aesthetic references facilitates
resonances with different readers/viewers, and importantly as Coker has
articulated many times it recasts a range of African characters, whether it is
Abdullah captain of the Caliph’s guard, the astrophysicist Persio, or the
powerful Denari designed ‘as a man of Afar ancestry, a descendant once of the
Kush Empire in Northern Africa’ (Coker, 2013) each equally different in
physical appearance and garb. Kenneth Coker has also produced earlier animated
work that presented similar exotic appeal. The CGI (computer generated imagery)
animations Oni Ise Owo (2008), and Iwa (2009) both provide further evidence
of this recontexualization of myth and aesthetic forms that stem from different
places/ spaces (https://vimeo.com/4488258) .
These new configurations of ‘local’ content offer a way to conceive
of content development that is not determined by the “Us” and “Them” model, but
instead one the engages with different aesthetic conventions and genres to enable
the work to travel to, from and across trans-national spaces. One strong
example of this repositioning of ‘local’ content can be identified in the work
of the Kenyan multi-media artists/ musicians/ animators known as Just a Band. Their work gained
visibility through online exhibition and distribution of their music and
videos. For their music video Inwiyo Piny
(2008) the viewer is confronted with a collage of urban photographic scenes in
Nairobi and illustrated characters that stylistically reminiscent of the
Gorillaz characters culminating in a surreal sequence with a flying tortoise
and deejay, intercut with scene that could sit within a manga anime. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3FIpWxUqXA)
However, the music video that they would become most famous for was Ha-He (2010). The video went viral
clocking over 657,000 views on YouTube with memes, associated online activity
on social networking sites and spin off websites. This Kenyan take on American Blaxplotation
films from the 1970’s presents Makmede as the superhero ‘bad-ass’ that saves
the day. ‘Makmende’ was so popular he even garnered his own Wikipedia entry.
More importantly whilst the video has strong aesthetic references to the
American 1970’s B-movies it includes strong cues to its Kenyan context. This
unique positioning resonated with Kenyan online users/viewers within Kenya and
the diaspora as they related to the specific references to Makmende, and
simultaneously a transnational audience could recognize the genre that this was
alluding to. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mG1vIeETHc
).
It is also worth pointing readers to the artist Jim Chuchu, who was
a member of the band, who has subsequently gone off to make his own work as
digital artist and director. His own short films include, HomeComing (2013) and To Catch a Dream (2014) (https://vimeo.com/116848487). These
films reconfigure stereotypical representations of Africa, within the science
fiction or Afro-Futurist genre or through the surreal lens of dreamscapes that
bring together cosmopolitan urbanites with mythical characters. This reimagining
of Kenyan space and narrative aligns well with other transnational films that
are ‘accented’ with elements from different places, urban/rural, real/virtual
and times past/ present/future (Naficy, 2001). And whilst these examples are
manifest within film or animation, it is worth reflecting upon how games
developers across the continent could look towards recognizing these formats in
there own work. One recent example of this in practice can be found in the work
of the Kenyan animator (and game developer) Andrew Kaggia and his move from the
political animation in 3D CGI Waguezi
2012 (2011) to the game NairobiX (2015) (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/01/world/africa/kenya-wageuzi-elections/index.html).
Kaggia’s animation referenced different cultural motifs, in this case re-presenting
Kenyan politicians as Transformers that race and battle through an urban
landscape pre-empting the then incumbent elections. Later in his game NairobiX Kaggia uses the city of Nairobi
as his game world where players move through a post-apocalyptic space shooting
aliens.
All of the examples I provided can of course be met with a critique
or scrutiny of the ‘authenticity’ of their work. People may examine how closely
they align with the individual narratives, or motifs, and local contexts. They
may question the players that are involved in some capacity with the
development, production and distribution of these forms. Any adaptation or
change to these could be construed as a corruption of the heritage or cultural
context that inspired the work. These opinions call for the need for artists to
align themselves with certain local themes and to do so exclusively. However
perhaps it is important to move away from essentialist positions that
pre-suppose that these artists resort to exclusionary devices of either one or
the other, and simply recognize that in today’s contemporary spaces, real and
virtual, transnational productions are the becoming more commonplace.
Developers, artists and digital media creatives are more adept and likely to
engage with a range of media that stem from different contexts, and therefore
perhaps we should not be surprised when they are able to combine these
influences with other aesthetic motifs that could sit easily within discussions
on Yoruba mythology, Ghanaian fertility dolls, and Tanzanian popular art such
as Tinga Tinga painting.
Bruns, A. (2006), ‘Towards Produsage:
Futures for User-Led Content Production’ in F. Sudweeks, and H. Hrachovec, C. Ess,
(eds.), Proceedings Cultural
Attitudes
towards Communication and Technology 2006, Estonia,
pp. 275-284.
Callus, P. (2012), ‘Reading Animation through the Eyes
of Anthropology: A Case Study of sub-Saharan African Animation’ in Animation:
an interdisciplinary journal, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 113-130.
Huggan,
G. (2001), The Post-Colonial Exotic:
Marketing the Margins, London: Routledge.
Naficy, H. (2001), An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Oxford:
Princeton University Press.
