Game Camp 2013

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!