The feels and thrills of online video gaming

COLLINS KARIUKI
In almost all towns in Kenya, there are businesses that target young gaming enthusiasts. Even though gaming in Kenya still faces negative perception from a majority who associate it with idleness, video gaming and e-Sport is a big economic driver, and it is beginning to gain traction in Kenya.

More and more young people are turning to online gaming and spending more time learning the various games. In fact, it is turning into a career for some. The question is, would you pursue it as a career?

Silvia ‘Queenarrow' Gathoni, 22
As street artist James De La Vega said, “Sometimes the King is a Woman.” When it comes to gaming in Kenya, Silvia ‘Queenarrow’ Gathoni, a law student at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, is king. 

From her calm demeanor, it is hard to tell that she is the first Kenyan player ever to be signed by a US based e-sports team, and the winner of the Blaze eSports tour. Even when gaming, she never loses composure. Her face never betrays the intensity and pressure that comes with competitive e-Sports. Her speciality is Tekken 7 and if you play against her, the outcome is almost certain – you will lose. 

“My life as a pro gamer involves a lot of practice. Whenever I am free, I practice for up to eight hours every day. I have practice sessions in the morning, afternoon and evening where I practice for about two hours in each session. Initially, I had to trek to Nairobi city centre just to practice but when I got signed to XiT Gaming (a US based team), I got a console so I no longer have to go to the CBD ,” she says.

Silvia’s love for gaming was influenced by her older brother and cousin who are avid gamers. She started playing when she was just three years old, but her professional career began taking shape in 2017 when, as a college student, she sought to find a hobby to fill her free time.

“I decided to look up potential gaming tournaments and came across the East African Gaming Convention at Two Rivers Mall where a Mortal Kombat XL tournament was being held. It was on Easter weekend and since I had nothing else to do, I signed up, played my heart out and emerged fourth in the tournament,” she says.

She later transitioned from Mortal Kombat to Tekken 7 after discovering an active community of Tekken players in Kenya.
“In 2018, Xit Gaming were looking for an African player so they reached out and signed me up. I was quite shocked at the time because I was a newbie and had never imagined I would land such a prestigious opportunity. I had to perform in order dispel the notion that I had been signed up just because I am a girI,” she explains.

“The experience with Xit gaming was humbling. I got to interact with Tekken players from Canada, Venezuela and the US who challenged me to be better. I stuck with Xit till January this year when I moved to Brutal Democracy e-Sports, a team that is based in the United Kingdom,” she says.

Just like every other gamer, Queenarrow frequently blames her gadget pads when she loses. She also admits to getting upset whenever she loses, but she never lets it show. She maintains her composure in every game by reminding herself that she is human and that there will be other opportunities to win. During a match, Silvia shuts her mind to everything else and focuses only on countering the positions her opponent may put her in.

Her pro gaming career is on an upward trajectory, but she doesn’t plan on making it a full time career.

“I am fully aware of the indifference that exists within the Kenyan society with regards to e-Sports. I can never sacrifice my day job for gaming unless I have the backing of top corporate players. Gaming can be a source of living and it does pay off, not just through winning tournaments but also by content creation.

Creating games on Twitch and YouTube is where the money is, she says.

To build her gaming career, Silvia has had to sacrifice some of her friendships, and to deal with toxic stakeholders who think that success came easily to her because she is a woman. Her family has been supportive, but she constantly has to assure them that she is not wasting her time.

Ryan ‘MuteAssassin’ Kimathi, 16
One of the most popular online gamers in Kenya goes by the name the Muteassassin-Ke. He is a versatile player who majors on first-person shooter games such as Call of Duty and Battleground. 

He runs a YouTube channel by the name Mute Assassin that showcases his gameplays, and he sometimes streams his games on Twitch, a platform dedicated to video game streaming. 

He has developed enviable skills and created a sizeable fan base, but that is not the most striking thing about him. Mute Assassin, whose real name is Ryan Kirimi Kimathi, is a Form Three student at Alliance High School. He aspires to be a mechanical engineer as well as a pro gamer.

“I was watching other gamers on Youtube and came across one called Ninja. I found that name interesting and it made me think of the word “assassin.” I added the name “mute”, which is a reflection of my personality. I am quite reserved,” he says.
Ryan started gaming in 2012 on a PSP console. He loves the thrill that comes with gaming and the difficulty in winning at various levels of the games.

His decision to open a YouTube channel was influenced by his supportive parents and reinforced by his older brother who continues to play a key role in sharpening his skills.

Although he is pursuing his gaming career together with his high school studies, he continues to post favourable grades in school.

"I follow a strict daily routine. I wake up early to study and engage in extracurricular activities, and I spend most of the day reading since that is my priority. On weekdays, I usually start gaming at 5.30pm and spend no more than three hours playing, while I practice for about five hours each day on weekends,” he says.

It is this strict routine that convinced his parents to allow him to continue gaming and even to run a Youtube Channel, and it keeps him from getting addicted to gaming, which is a serious problem in developed countries like Korea. It also helps him maintain a healthy social life.

“I am trying to build a community of online gamers but I am struggling to grow an audience that knows and supports me. Getting proper equipment is another challenge. To stream and upload quality games, you need the right equipment, some of which are very expensive,” he says.

Ryan believes that self-belief and confidence is deeply lacking in the local gaming community. He says that many Kenyan gamers are good enough to go pro, but they don’t have anyone to support them. Some even avoid streaming or running a gaming channel because they doubt their abilities, and this shouldn’t be the case.

“This industry could benefit from more local tournaments. This will bring together players with different skills and capabilities so that they can learn from each other. We need to leverage on e-Sports as a key driver of the Kenyan economy because it is a lucrative field in developed countries.”

Brian Gichuhi Chege
Courtesy of Covid-19, online gaming has gained traction globally. This exponential popularity is not limited to modern day video games on consoles such as the playstation, Xbox or even personal computers. Traditional games such as chess have also found a second home online, and the number of players keeps rising.

However, the level of commitment and dedication to online chess games exhibited by Brian Gichuhi,

 Third Year Business Computing student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology(JKUAT), is second to none.

Brian has participated in 16,527 games on lichess.org, a platform that supports online chess gaming. He is ranked position 901 worldwide in rapid chess, which is no mean feat. He once emerged third globally on Lichess.

When it comes to over the board chess, Brian won the Kenya National Youth Chess Championship with a clean sheet in 2013 in the under 16 boys category and represented Kenya in the Africa Youth Chess Championships in Zambia. He repeated the same feat in 2017 in the National Championships, but he failed to get a visa to proceed to the Africa Championships in Egypt. He has since won several locally organised junior chess events and has six trophies and four medals to show for his efforts.

Now that physical meetings are being discouraged due to the coronavirus pandemic, Brian has been left with no choice but to play chess online. He hopes to become an international chess master, and he has begun following a structured training regime to this end.

“My chess day starts with some training exercises on chessable.com which takes about two hours. In the afternoon, I log onto lichess.org to watch some of my mentors to understand why they chose to make certain moves. This is followed by a brief two-hour nap which if I miss, affects my night session. I am more active at night. Sometimes I stay awake till 4am playing chess or doing some chess studies,” he says.

On a busy day, Brian spends at least two hours online playing chess. On days when he has more free time, he spends more than eight hours online playing and learning chess. He is unafraid of admitting that his love for chess has grown into an addiction. He is, however, impressed by the fact that playing online allows him to feature against titled masters, which is almost impossible to do physically.

He argues that his addiction to chess is different. It is the thirst to learn more and be better, and that has not affected his social life in any way because he is an introvert by nature.

“Chess is all about calculation, creativity and how much homework you've done before meeting your opponent. As Mikhail Tal put it, ‘You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.’ That is what I am constantly aiming for in all my games. Once you start to think you understand chess, you realise there is even more information that you are not privy to, and this makes me want to learn more and understand the game better,” he says.

Even with chess becoming a popular career path in Kenya, with prizes being made more attractive and jobs such as coaching becoming popular, Brian hasn’t considered pursuing it as a career even though he spends so much time playing.

“I haven’t thought of making chess a full time career, but I enjoy taking the prize money in tournaments. I will always continue studying chess, participating in tournaments and improving my understanding of this complex yet entertaining game. As of now, I am focusing on finishing my undergraduate studies. However, as long as Covid-19 keeps us indoors, chess will be a major feature in my life.”

collinsmunkary@gmail.com