Malawian game goes android
With 7.7 billion mobile devices worldwide by December last year according to www.pennystocks.la and a boom in global smart phone sales by more than 25 percent as compared to the previous year, mobile phone game development is the way to go.
According to www.appannie.com , games generated 70 percent more revenue than they did in 2013, and Android games increased revenue with 60 percent in 2014 from 2013.
These figures suggest that there is potential in the mobile game industry.
That is why Pike Msonda, a student at DMI-St John the Baptist University in Mangochi; Chifundo Kasiya, a software developer at Angle Dimension; Sylvester Mphinji, a student at DMI-St John the Baptist University, and Tiseke Chilima, a presenter at Timveni, teamed up to develop a game which they called Blue Guardian.
According to Msonda, the idea of developing games came as a hobby from which they developed Spectacular Blue Boy which is on Google Play
“But the idea of Blue Guardian came about as we were trying to improve upon our previous releases of the first game we worked on called The Spectacular Blue Boy [available now on Google Play]. The main idea is to have a fun little platform game that is easy to play but challenging,” said Msonda.
Noticing that the game had low quality graphics, they they started searching and posting online that they needed someone to improve their game art.
Gifny Richata from Olay Studios in Indonesia was one of the people that saw the post and thought he could help.
“So, instead of improving the already existing game, we decided to make a new one set in the same universe called the
Blue-verse, and we called the game Blue Guardian. The story is about Hoopla, a guy who is a guardian of love and he gets through obstacles to get to the antagonist who is Dr Kaola,” said Msonda.
He said they hope to generate more revenue through Blue Guardian which they will launch in December on Google Play.
“In Indonesia, there are more than 30 million Android users and Olay will do our marketing apart from developing our art. So, we believe we will tap into one of the largest markets in Android app development,” said Msonda.
He adds: “As we release these games we hope to get enough revenue to start building bigger PC games and venture into 3D. We also hope to set up a company and employ people from artists to sound engineers etc. In game development, there is room for everyone. That is the beauty about it.”
Msonda exhibited Blue Guardian at Mhub’s Tech Fest last Friday at College of Medicine in Blantyre.
Mhub is a company that promotes programmers by marketing their merchandise and linking them with interested investors in their innovations.
