In the quiet neighborhood of Obili, tucked away in the backstreets of Cameroon's capital Yaounde, a team of 23 youths are burning the midnight oil. They're on a mission and venturing on a path untraveled by their peers.

"We are the gaming industry in Cameroon and we want to be more than just a gaming studio. We want to be an entertainment pool in the sub-region of Central Africa," one of the team leaders Dominique Yakan Brand told ChinAfrica.

Brand co-founded the Kiro'o Games startup with Olivier Madiba. They launched their first game Aurion: The Legacy of the Kori-Odan in 2016. It is currently being played by 100,000 subscribers worldwide. The Africa-themed game combines cultures of 14 African countries, including Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Egypt and Niger, and is based on African mythology.

"It's about a kind of universe where African cultures could have evolved without colonialism and taken a path [focusing] more [on] craftsmanship than industrialization. Then, we add magic to it," said Brand.

Self-published games

The game storyline is about two heroes - a young prince and his princess of Zama. After the two are married, the prince's brother stages a coup and exiles the newlywed couple from the city. The forced move allows them to discover a world they never knew because the city of Zama is small and isolated from the problems of the world of Aurion. They get a chance to find a new life and a legacy which is not physical but more of an ideology - the importance of being a Kori-Odan (name of their ancestors) in the new world. This includes the significance of being king and what it means to be married.

Starting Central Africa's first gaming studio was a difficult task, said Brand. Cameroon doesn't have agreements that enable gaming startups to publish games independently. They had to find a publisher in France, called Plugin Digital, to access the popular Steam online gaming portal.

"We had to raise money ourselves, so we launched a Kickstarter crowd funding campaign," said Brand. He said initially, Cameroonians did not trust the startup and many people preferred to invest in agriculture and livestock.

"[Our success means that] even government is now encouraging our project and the fact that we raised $500,000 in one month during our last $1-million crowd funding campaign is an indication that we have gained trust and attention," said Brand.

Playing Aurion, however, requires gaming computers and consoles which many Cameroonians do not have. It is for this reason that most of the game players are from outside the country. Kiro'o is planning to launch a game available on smartphones next year to capitalize on the millions of Cameroonians who own the devices.

Growing industry

While the gaming industry is still trying to find its feet in Central Africa, it is burgeoning in other regions like East Africa. A 2018 audit done by PricewaterhouseCoopers puts the value of the Kenyan video gaming industry, which is among top 10 in Africa, at $63 million and projects it will grow to $118 million by 2022.

It is worth noting that North Africa comes first in terms of revenue generated by the industry. Egypt is ranked as the top gaming market in Africa, generating $293 million in 2018. Morocco was ranked third, generating $129 million last year, while South Africa is also among the top gaming countries.

Nathan Masyuko, head of Games and co-founder of Nairobi-based Ludique Works Ltd., one of the continent's biggest gaming businesses, argues that the statistics don't tell the whole story.

"A lot of gamers play online; but because the servers they connect to are based in North America, Europe or South Africa, it becomes difficult to get accurate data as to the actual numbers of online gamers and the revenues being generated from those gamers," he said.

Masyuko said that slow Internet connections also hamper the industry. There is relatively low penetration of home connections to the Internet in Kenya, according to Masyuko, and thus personal computer and console gaming is not as popular as mobile gaming. This is because mobile data rates are getting lower in Africa as competition in the mobile Internet space gets more intense.

Masyuko, who has participated in the production of a variety of games and gamification solutions, from esports events, social impact games, corporate gamification projects to gamified educational experiences for primary school children, said they get 70,000 to 400,000 downloads annually for published games.

Big revenue earner

Masyuko said the current environment makes it difficult to commercialize and monetize games.

This prompted Ludique to develop a platform to support the wider gaming industry, by providing publishing services that will help other growing developer studios in Kenya and across Africa to commercialize and monetize their games, as well as raise capital.

"We are focusing on the video game developer community and currently have a membership of over 500 people from diverse professional backgrounds, such as programmers, animators and intellectual property lawyers," said Masyuko, adding that the aim is to develop the industry as a viable path for future young developers to build a career. "The industry has a huge potential to create jobs," he said.

Lilian Nduati, CEO of Ludique, told BBC, "Young Africans living abroad are asking, 'How come I'm not seeing someone who looks like me or speaks like me in some of the games that I'm playing?' So, what we're trying to do is to fill the gap," she said. "We envision a future where we've produced a game from here - so from Africa to the world."

Currently, the revenue generated in the video game industry globally is larger than the movie and music industries combined, according to Masyuko, who believes Africa can replicate the industry's global success on the continent if African developers focus on the economics of the industry.

He also said Africa needs to jump on the esports train while it is gaining traction and getting recognition from entities such as the International Olympics Committee.

Infrastructure strain

If Africa can continue with infrastructure development to get deeper penetration of both fiber and mobile Internet, and bring down rates and tariffs for Internet access, this will definitely speed up the process of Africa becoming a world leader in the gaming industry, say insiders.

They also see a need for investors to take the big risks and lay the ground work for Africa's gaming pioneers to build sustainable business models that can absorb the talent that exists in the market.

Daniel Macharia, founder of Mashariki Mobility in Kenya, has developed three games over the past four years. One of the games, Wana Savana-Tamasha is a 2D adventure platform game that is the first in the world to feature an African girl as the main character.

Macharia said his current reach varies between 2,000 and 5,000 players for the various games. "The potential of the gaming industry is really huge in Africa. If it was able to stand firmly on its feet, like it has in the other continents, jobs would be generated in a variety of fields like music and special effects production, script writing, quality assurance and, of course, software development.

On the subject of addiction and health risks to children involved in gaming, Macharia said parents can restrict access to the games just as they do for TV and movies.

(Reporting from Cameroon)

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