Young workers power South Africa’s video games industry

As a child Devlyn van der Walt dreamed of one day being a video game developer.

“During primary school, I would make games from paper and put them into a ring bind file, cut out paper characters and move them through the pages,” he says.

But his home town Middelburg, 100 miles east of Johannesburg, South Africa, was not exactly a centre of video game production.

Nevertheless, his enthusiasm spurred him to train as a software developer and to learn game development on the side.

His efforts were rewarded with a job at Johannesburg-based 24 Bit Games, where he has been for just over a year.

“I do really enjoy the different and challenging work,” he says.

Mr van der Walt, is now part of South Africa’s small, but thriving, video games industry.

Studio manager at 24 Bit Games Nicolina Visentin-E’Silva, proudly waves at the “wall of fame” at the company’s offices.

It displays titles the team has worked on, like the locally-flavoured Broforce and Cocoon, which was nominated for four Bafta Games Awards in 2023.

Ms Visentin-E’Silva says her company has expanded along with the wider local industry.

“Since I’ve been here, I have definitely felt an increase in all things games.“

That growth has been noticed overseas – 24 Bit Games was bought by Californian game publisher, Annapurna Interactive, in November.

Part of the success comes down to the increased availability of junior level staff, who are being trained up by more university courses.

Plus, according to Ms Visentin-E’Silva, there’s the local can-do culture.

“South Africans are just a different bunch,” she says with a laugh.

“We’ve always been adaptable. We are going to get the job done one way or another, and we’ll do it professionally.”

Arabella Rogerson, marketing manager at games studio Sea Monster, backs up that point.

She says South African developers are comfortable working on games for both the local market and international players.

The other attraction, she says, is that those developers are relatively cheap compared with elsewhere in the world.

“It’s kind of like all eyes are on Africa as the next frontier of where a lot of creative influence will come for the world, which is an amazing space to be in,” she says.

Despite the opportunity, the South African video games business remains small.

The South African Cultural Observatory’s review of the industry in September 2022 found that the sector was in its infancy, with about 50 studios.

Most of these were less than a decade old at the time, and not many were making a significant income directly from game production.

At the time, about seven bigger studios had broken into the global gaming market, though the focus was largely on service work not production from scratch.

The review found that the growth potential for the industry was centred on premium PC games that were more likely to be played abroad.

However, the country’s lower cost of living made gaming professionals in the country possibly more attractive, or at least competitive, in the global sphere.

A study by Tshimologong, a technology development hub linked to the University of the Witwatersrand, identified closer to 60 active studios, but most of of these were very small and only made up of one or two people. The few, larger studios were the ones driving the sector’s growth.

Erik Prinz is in the early days of his career designing video games – he has been at local games developer Nyamakop since 2022.

In high school, he saw a magazine article about a game design course opening at the local University of the Witwatersrand.

“My best friend and I basically couldn’t believe it,” he says. “We didn’t think that was a thing you could do in South Africa!”

Along with that friend, Rodwin Malinga, Mr Prinz went on to study undergraduate and Master’s degrees at that university, and both men went on to join Nyamakop.

Mr Malinga accepts that the South African industry is relatively small at the moment, but is optimistic about the future.

“Though on the surface things may seem to be moving slowly right now, when a lot of these new projects, teams, and companies reveal themselves, there is going to be a massive wave of South African content in the industry.”

As well as having a new wave of game developers, South Africa is a growing market for games themselves, points out Chris Beer, an analyst at GWI.

“South Africans are keen gamers, being more likely than the global average to use the three big gaming devices – smartphones, PCs, and games consoles.”

In particular, there is a focus on sport-related options, like racing and fighting games. South Africans are also most likely worldwide to use gambling or betting applications, he says.

Over the last two decades, the local gaming and digital entertainment expo, rAge, has seen a steady growth in not only audience interest but diversity.

“These days we’ve got a truly diverse cross section of South Africa coming to the event, all ages, races, and genders,” says rAge project director, Michael James.

He says he has seen people who grew up coming to the event as gaming enthusiasts return as game developers.

But there are challenges points out esports commentator Sam Wright – a well known voice in the world of competitive gaming.

“We do have a gap in developing the audience because the majority of young people that I speak to cannot actually afford to game because of the cost of the [internet] data and the tech.”

She explains that data is more expensive in South Africa than other parts of the world.

The gaming industry’s overall move to digital products and subscriptions rather than physical game copies, makes the cost issue even more difficult.

“We have a very active base of people with smartphones, but it’s very expensive for them to get online,” she says.