Game Development In the Heart of Africa 72
Peace Corps Online writes "The Internet has been credited with 'flattening' the world economy, giving anyone anywhere with the requisite skills the opportunity to build a game or create an app on Facebook. Now the Mercury News reports on a new game for the iPhone called iWarrior. It was produced by two 26-year-old developers in Africa, Eyram Tawiah (a Ghanaian) and Wesley Kirinya (a Kenyan), who created every element of their game — the mechanics, the graphics, the music — overcoming considerable obstacles to develop their first product. The game is 'a feed 'em up game, not a shoot 'em up,' says Tawiah, where you 'defend your village by feeding and driving away the animals before they crash it and feed on your livestock and garden!' with threats including thundering elephants, mighty rhinos, swift cheetahs, and crafty hyenas. The developers' company, Leti, which means 'star' in the Ewe language, was nurtured by the philanthropic arm of San Francisco-based Meltwater Group, an Internet business services company, which in 2008 founded the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, Ghana. 'We believe talent is everywhere,' says the Meltwater founder and CEO."
Promo BS (Score:5, Informative)
"The game is 'a feed 'em up game, not a shoot 'em up' says Tawiah where you 'defend your village by feeding and driving away the animals before they crash it and feed on your livestock and garden!'"
Gotta call BS on this one. The gameplay is fundamentally the same as Galaga or Centipede; hostile stuff comes down the screen and you shoot it. On some levels here the backstory is "throw stones to frighten", on others it's "throw hay to distract", but the mechanics are identical. It's a shoot-em-up.
Re:Ignorance. (Score:0, Informative)
The Soviet experience showed no such thing.
It showed that when you have a revolution, you need to make sure that Stalin doesn't rise up through the ranks of your party, take over everything and kill dissenters, then implement disastrous policies that look on the surface like things you might do but are really just the same old same old historians have come to expect from new emperors.
Re:Ignorance. (Score:1, Informative)
Do people really think Africa is only peopled by savage tribesmen running around with grass skirts and spears? They have cities with computers and nearly everyone has a cell phone (copper landlines tend to get stolen).
That's funny....you start out stating they aren't savages but then proceed to explain why they are exactly that (in a sense) even suggesting a civilized Western approach to surviving.......I am not saying you are wrong, just found it hilarious your entire post contradicts the point you are trying to make ;-)
Carry on!