With the world on lockdown, there is little in the form of entertainment. You probably have already binged your Netflix queue a couple of times over and finished all of your favourite YouTuber’s content.
You may have heard of this whole gaming phenomenon and thought that you might want to take a look into it. You probably associated it with FIFA joints near your local chill spot and assumed that it is too niche and too expensive to get into right now.
However, this is just a drop in the ocean that is video games. Here we will discuss what exactly gaming and video games constitute.
Video games garnered mainstream popularity in the ’70s when computers started getting more popular in the world. They did, however, exist since the '50s is universities like MIT.
The first mainstream games were simple text-based adventures where you would interact with the game by typing what you wanted to happen. The computer would prompt you something like:
“You are in a forest, there is a stream to the east, mountains to the West and South and the Kingdom of Valhalla to the North. What do you do?”
To which you would type: “Go North.” or something in that manner. This would continue until a specific objective was met or until the game ended.
It was not much, but this was the advent of video games. As computers and technology advanced, more powerful new genres of games came up.
Most famous were the arcade-type video games like Pacman and Space Invaders. Later on, games like Metal Gear Solid, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Mortal Kombat and others started cropping up.
So, what exactly is a video game? It is simply an electronic game that requires input from the player and generates feedback on a screen in either a 2D or a 3D space.
This means that everything from Angry Birds to Fortnite, Temple Run to FIFA or Asphalt to Dirt Rally is a video game. Different video games operate on different platforms.
A platform is a specific device on which a video game can be played. The most common at the moment is the Playstation console while others include the Computer, the XBOX, Nintendo and mobile phones. There are others like the new Cloud Gaming Platforms, for example, Google Stadia.
Gaming has come a long way since the days of text adventure games. These days we have games that will pose very philosophical questions with their storyline (like Bioshock (2007)) which asked, “is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow”).
The gaming scene has exploded with many different genres to suit many different people. Some of the Genres include the ubiquitous First-Person Shooter (or FPS) games like Call of Duty, the Role Playing Game (RPG) like God of War, fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Sandbox games like GTA, Hyper casual games, story-driven, Co-op games, Multiplayer, Battle Royale, Roguelikes, Souls-Like and many others.
It is worth noting that a single video game can span multiple genres. Video game streaming is a new emergent trend that cropped up when more and more people started sharing their gaming adventures online. Sites like Twitch, Discord and YouTube have been used to this effect.
As the culture of gaming became more popular, the events associated with it became even more popular. The gaming tournaments or eSports tournaments have been frequented by gamers since online gaming became popular in the early 2000s.
People would go to the events for cosplay opportunities, merchandise and so much more. The eSports phenomenon has grown very fast in the past few months given the global pandemic and large organisations like Formula1 and NASCAR are even having their own eSport series after their seasons were cancelled.
You could say the pandemic kicked the eSports scene into high gear and I personally do not see it stopping soon.
Gaming was ideally a male-dominated activity, but in recent years, it has shifted drastically, with the number of female gamers in countries like the US amounting to about 45% of the demographic.
Even in Kenya, one of our highest paid eSports athletes, Malika Siheme (Queen Arrow) is female and to add to that most of the gaming clans have a large number of female gamers in them. This is to show that gaming today is not defined by media stereotypes. The field of gamers out there is wide and diverse.
Gaming is an amazing piece of pop-culture and Pro Series Gaming (PSG) is here to deliver it to you. Pro Series Gaming is a multi-game and a multi-tournament eSports Brand, with the aim of bringing a number of different eSports tournaments and activities together.
So eSports, what is it? Esports is the abbreviation for electronic sports i.e., competitive video gaming. Yes, this is actually a thing and you can have a career playing video games. Pro Series Gaming (PSG) has opened up this reality to Kenya.
PSG promotes gaming in Africa and creates entertaining digital content. PSG hosts LAN parties which is a setup where gamers come with their consoles and play cooperatively or competitively or both. Now it is not only a thing you hear of, for example, a 16-year-old won Ksh321 million ($3M) for playing a video game in Europe, but it is becoming a reality right here at home.
Because of Pro Series Gaming clans/teams like Masters of Mayhem (MoM), The Watchmen, Corps Rampage, Savannah FGC, Simba Ultimate etc., have come into play. These teams enter tournaments like Call of Duty, FIFA, Mortal Kombat, etc. PSG offers merchandise and prize pools to gamers.
There is a lot more to be said about gaming and PSG than can be covered in the span of a single article, but hopefully, this has piqued your interest enough to go deeper into the world of gaming.
Editor's note: This article was authored by Patrick Wendo.