2020 — Lookback Highlights!

Douglas Ogeto
LudiqueWorks Media
Published in
5 min readDec 31, 2020

Our Hearts and Love to all those affected in one way or another during this year!

We are grateful for the year that has been and our achievements, despite all that has happened! We’re always ever grateful to our Partners, Advisors, Studios, Writers and Community with whom this ride is always pleasant and worthwhile with!

We ushered in the year with a trip to Uganda where, in partnership with the Finn Church Aid — we supported lead a Video game hackathon and workshop.

Finn Church Aid, Uganda Video Game Workshop

End January had us organizing and managing the yearly Nairobi Global Game Jam, sponsored by Liquid Telecom that’s aimed at growing the local developer ecosystem and across skillsets. We had Johana Riquier (Strategic Partnerships & Business Development Middle-East & Africa at Unity) who was in town serve as a guest speaker as well as jury member at the event finals.

Nairobi Game Jam

Early February saw Nathan Masyuko, share at Afrobytes local event hosted at the iHub, on the panel “Attack on the small screens: Africa’s booming mobile gaming scene” alongside Ben Roberts, Johana Riquier and Jay Shapiro & moderated by Ammin Youssef.

Afrobytes Panel: Attack on the Small Screens

February ‘s monthly meetup, we hosted Atamiza who delivered a very successful workshop on “Introduction to Unreal Engine” training led by Matt Berlin.

Africa Game Developers Meetup with Atamiza

Later in the month, Douglas Ogeto shared on “Video Game & eSports landscape in Africa” at the CoCreate Festival (South Africa)

cocreateSANL (South Africa)

March brought us surprising and equally rewarding news — Nathan Masyuko (LudiqueWorks Co-Founder) shared the news that Apple had given him an offer to join them to continue the mission we had started in supporting the video game developers ecosystem. He exited the company to Join Apple as the App Store Business Manager, Africa with a focus on helping game developers across the continent grow a sustainable businesses through the App Store. Look out for more freebies and support :-)

With the official declaration of the pandemic Globally, April saw us pivot the monthly in-person meetups organized for the community into Virtual meetups which helped scale while also connecting and benefiting more game developers across the continent. This has since progressed through the year with more engagement and collaborations.

In a fast paced dynamic space that is technology, June saw us open up the opportunity for students and game developers alike from across the continent learn about 5G in partnership with Aalto University from Finland.

August Delight had us supporting and partnering with Africacomicade — a platform that brings together enthusiasts and digital creatives across the games, animation, comics, and movie industry in Africa via insightful events such as conventions, game jams and so much more.

October was Mega exciting (Pun intended) where firstly in partnership with Netinfo (Anchor Partner) we announced the launch of the Africagamedev project supported by Epic through their Megagrant to train and support game developers and studios with Unreal Engine training.

Later in, saw us present to Hon. Joe Mucheru (Cabinet Secretary at the Ministry of ICT) on how Animation and Games have contributed significantly to the creative industry with a global consumption of 1.6 Billion people generating a revenue of £82 billion. #FilmAsAnEconomicDriver This was courtesy of the Kenya Film Commission who had organized the roundtable.

Kenya Film Commission Round-table

We accompanied the Kenya Film Commission in November to SwahiliPot (Mombasa) where they delivered machines as part of the Commission’s strategy to empower the youth with skills to take advantage of the digital economy (Video Games, Film, Animation) to create meaningful employment and wealth.

Kenya Film Commission — Swahili Pot

Last but not least, we’re excited that Naota Studios — one of our signed studios was accepted into the Sony Talent League program for their upcoming game “Kawia’s adventure”, a fantasy role playing game set in Precolonial East Africa.

We’re Super Grateful to the many other online panel & podcast opportunities to share more on the nascent and fast developing Video game market that is Africa! Devcom, #CitiTrends, iron Source , Pocket Gamer among st others!

LudiqueWorks is a video game publishing and video game development company based out of Africa. With a network of 150+ studios in 30 countries across Africa.

LudiqueWorks invests in nascent video game development studios on the continent through training and funding, as well as building a growing video gaming community through the Africa Game Developers network.

For more information, Follow Us: Twitter, Facebook & reach us via email on: info@ludique.works

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Douglas Ogeto
LudiqueWorks Media

Entrepreneur | Catalyst | Advisory | Co-Founder @Ludiqueworks | Innovation Partnerships @LiquidInTech | @sxsw Advisory Board | #edTech #eSports #gamedevs