Aaaaand we're back!

And so we enter another year. 2009 seems to have started off pretty hectic around here, hence the late new year post, and I am kinda liking that.

Gaming-wise, we have Killzone 2, Street Fighter 4 and Resident Evil 5 on the imminent horizon filling up February and March rather nicely, and there are loads of new indie games that were released over the holidays and are also due in the next three months so there will surely be loads to talk about.

I spent the initial part of the holidays playing and loving Mirror's Edge. I finished the main campaign AND got the test of faith achievement on my first playthrough so I don not understand what all the fuss is about the game being too annoying or broken or hard. Yes, I died a hell of a lot, but once you get into it, it is certainly one of the freshest experiences I had in the whole of 2008. The time trials are definitely going to keep me busy and I am already trying to sort out a way to get cash on PSN so I can purchase the DLC later this month.

I also got Little Big Planet for Christmas from my mum. This is another game that I do not understand the lack of sales for. I haven't even started using the level editor, and I can already say that it is a classic platformer. Yes, the jumping is floaty. Yes, the physics system takes some getting used to, but what is wrong with that? The Metroid Prime series had an unconventional control system, but once it was learned it was highly intuitive and worked perfectly for what it was. You can't jump in Bionic Commando: Rearmed. I am sure I can think of loads of games with unconventional control schemes and/or ways of interacting with the world and a lot of them are great games. I think we should stop insisting that every game perform the way we expect it to and approach them all with a blank slate ready to learn what the game has to teach us about exploring its world. One should not be surprised to encounter an FPS that controls exactly like a 2d side-scrolling platformer. As long as it works for what it wants to accomplish, sweet!

Anyway, I also played a bit of Dragon Quest IV on the DS(which is really awesome by-the-way, the first JRPG in a while I have enjoyed playing) and Bionic Commando: Rearmed on the X360. 

All-in-all, I think I spent the holidays in the company of some pretty sweet games. 

This year we are looking at expanding the blog, first with the move to wordpress and its own domain, and then by organising a gaming meet here in Lagos! I am still working out the details of venue and so on, but I am aiming for March 2009. There will be loads of competitive gaming in the forms of Halo 3, SFIV, some football for those that want it (yech!), and maybe even some racing! I also plan to have some PC systems here and there with repositories of indie, abandonware and other freeware games for people to get a hold of and maybe even some exhibition games by those still heavily into competition here. It will be great!

I also met up with a guy at an anime meet (Yes, there was an anime meet in Lagos! Crazy!) who knows the guys behind LaKraft entertainment. They organised the Nigerian group that was hoping to go for the World Cyber Games that I wrote about last year. My plan is to get in touch with them and we will see whether we can get something going together.

In other news, my first game is coming along nicely, and I should be able to have an alpha version in about one or two weeks time depending on how work goes.

I also want to ask for more interaction from you, our wonderful readers and subscribers. SKG is about building up the Nigerian gaming community, and yet, I barely hear from any of you. So, speak up. Oh! And in case you were trying to escape, the same goes for our foreign readers as well. We know who you are. :-)

Well, a happy new year again to everyone. 2009 is going to rock!

Oh! Internet

I decided to go online in order to see if anyone else was writing about the Nigerian gaming scene and I found a couple of articles written by Mayowa Tomori on the Nigerians going to the World Cyber Gaming Tournament this year. The article shed some more light on three of the contestants and he was quite supportive of our going at all. They are definitely worth a read and I am going to be following up on the company that is organising the whole thing, La Kraft Entertainment.

All that was quite inspirational and it made me feel good to be a gamer, and a Nigerian gamer at that until I decided to have a look at the comments on this one in particular.

Wow. The degree of stupidity and quite frankly, ignorance on display was quite disheartening. Usually, I get annoyed by most internet comments pages, but this was just outright reprehensible.

To think that people who are supposed to be in a land that grants them exposure, education, opportunities and infrastructure that one would think would allow them to develop in a better way are just wasting all their opportunities away. And the worst part is, I can see how it can happen. When you're in a culture that can afford to support, and in fact actively encourages individualism and freedom of thought, most people will probably go for the meanest and laziest path available to them.

It scares me sometimes as we rush headlong into a democratic and 'developed' society. Is that what is waiting for us? A new generation of internet idiots waiting to suck at the teat of a fibre optic cable with no sense of propriety? It is no wonder that the majority of gamers who were commenting on various blogs and sites during the whole Resident Evil 5 racism wahala were completely oblivious to how imagery in the game could even be construed as racist. I remember watching the video, and I would be the first to admit that it didn't make me think 'racism' the minute I saw it, but after a bit of thought it did come off a bit indelicate. Not racist so much as using racist stereotyping.

All that most of them saw was a black man saying that blacks should never be zombies.

Well, I guess this is even more of a reason for more Africans to get into the game development/playing scene. The more these net kiddies see real Africans and African inspired games the more used to our culture they could get. Instead of getting it all from news reports about wars, killings, and from Black Hawk Down on blu ray.