The fourth annual West African Gaming Expo took place at Queens Park Events Center Victoria Island Lagos.
The 3 day event compromising of a 2 day Hackathon and 1 day conference and exhibition attracted attendees from all over West Africa.
The first panel was “Women in Gaming, Animation and Content Creation” . Speakers Dele Tejuoso of WifiCombat and Jane Ivhurie of Iconcepts spoke about the importance of having women in gaming, how women can thrive in the gaming industry , and types of games they should be creating for the market. Dele Tejuosos spoke about her work and the number of young women and how Wificombat has successfully trained over 2000 young women. Jane of Iconcept spoke about what Iconcepts can do for young developers regarding distribution and marketing of created content.
The next panel to take the stage focused on “Animation and Comics in Africa”. Somto Ajuluchukwu of Vortex Studio, Jide Martin of Comic Republic, Kolawole Olarewaju of Komotion Studio, spoke about the current state of African Animation and where they see the industry going. They preached the importance of networking and working with other creatives, showcasing African culture and folklore through comics and animation, and the difficulties being faced by content creators raising revenue. The importance of more develop industry and corporation aiding the growth of the content creation industry is very important.
Next up was the Pitch a Game competition, this is when developers under the age of 17 have the opportunity to demo a game they have created to attendees and WAGE 17 Judges. After going through hundreds of entries, our judges selected 15 finalist, all finalist had 5 minutes to showcase their developed games. After a long process deliberation our judges had their results, in 3rd place from American international school (Wificombat ) was Susan, 2nd place was Backcock University High School (Center 4 tech ) was Chiejina and 1st place was Daniel from Supreme Education School ( Wificombat ).
WAGE 17 which was sponsored by Pepsi, Mall For Africa and Gamsole. Hackathoners had a chance to show the audience and the judges the games they had created over a 2 day period. Over 24 developers worked on 6 different games over a 2 day period prior to the WAGE 17 conference and expo. The winning team TCS created a game based on Mall For Africa product delivery. Players had to navigate their way around Lagos state, making sure they did not crash and they made all their necessary deliveries. The wining team received $200 from Mall Far Africa, whilst the second place team received a months paid internship with Vortex Studios.
Other speakers to take part in WAGE 17 includes, Kunmi Adenipebi, Zubair Abubakar, Sidick Bakayoko.