Their goal has now become to understand the value that Africans derive from games and to build a scalable and sustainable business around the products they create.
They started out with the aim of telling African stories through games and other form of media, to educate, entertain and to empower Africans. With the success of their first mobile game “Mzito”, they took a major step towards achieving these goals. As the years have gone by and their knowledge & experience within the tech, games and entertainment industry increased, their goal has now become to break the boundaries of what gaming really means to Africans, to understand the value that Africans derive from games and to build a scalable and sustainable business around the products they create.
Hi George and James, what are your backgrounds, and what have been your careers?
My name is George Ahere, the CEO of Weza Interactive Entertainment. I am also the lead developer of our games and double as a designer. I am a Software Developer and I’ve been making games for a number of years now. I also work as a Researcher and Game Programmer at Cologne University in Germany, this has really helped shape how I not only approach game design and development but also how I look at the business side of making and shipping games that people can draw value from.
My name is James Ochong Ahere. I am the Chief Legal Officer and Business Development Lead at Weza. I am a Lawyer by profession. My work at Weza involves ensuring we are compliant with the laws and regulations that govern both tech and businesses in Kenya, ensuring our finances are in order and helping with shaping the vision, culture and future of our company.
What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?
Our main and flagship product/game has been “Mzito”. This is a 2D faller platformer adventure game where you play as one of the first two Mzito and go on an epic adventure to save Africa across 15 majestic locations. The idea is for the player to purge the ancient corruption and begin the new African awakening on their adventure.
We wanted to make games that Africans could relate to in terms of our cultures and way of life. Games that could entertain but also make people want to become better versions of themselves, to educate and empower them. Initially, the idea was quite simple, to make a cool game that could embody the above while still being fun to play but over time, it has evolved to become the “Mzito” universe that it is now and giving rise to other titles such as “Riziki” that we are just about to release.
Our other game title is “Mzito Math” which is a localized digital mobile game where children aged 4 to 8 years old are able to learn numeracy skills in an engaging and interactive manner. The stories and content used here are based on the “Mzito” Universe.
How did you build it? (tools and resources used)
We mainly use Unity for our work but Unreal Engine is also a great tool whenever required.
How did you get your first customers/users?
We mainly used social media marketing to get our first users. Talking about the game on our socials helped a lot. After that we took advantage of sponsored articles on newsletters and blogs as well as attending a number of Game conventions locally and internationally.
Having a community that supports you and talking about your game online really helps with user acquisition. You could have the best game but if nobody knows you or knows the game exists they will not download it; they will even download a game that is not as good as yours simply because they know the creator of the game. Marketing is hard thus talking about the game and putting it out there as often as possible makes things slightly easier.
We also realized that it is cheaper to acquire users for your game in Africa as compared to the other continents. The user acquisition costs are much lower in Africa.
Financially/user acquisition wise how is the product doing?
When we started out we managed to get about 20k downloads while pushing on our own and after getting a distribution deal, this went up to about 110k downloads for the “Mzito” game. This also helped with revenue generation from the game. We did better revenue wise as compared to downloads.
We’ve always felt like we could have done even better but it has been a great learning experience and we are channeling these lessons towards “Rizik”, the new game that we’ll be releasing soon.
What are some of the challenges you have faced, mistakes made & some disadvantages of working on the product?
As CEO I can honestly say there have been so many mistakes I can’t even name a specific one for that matter. All of these mistakes have been a real learning experience and have also shaped and made our company what it is today.
As for me (James), I would say one of our mistakes was not planning for human resource, the people we had when we started out and those who came on board later. People will come and go from your company and having in place systems to manage this early on really helps in saving time and costs involved. People management is key for business prosperity.
Our other mistake was running the business without a deep understanding of the regulatory landscape. This includes the tax implications of incorporation, or having a product on the appstore, and even fundraising from foreign entities.” I was heavily inexperienced at the onset, thus leading the business to bear unforeseen expenses that slowed down our momentum.
What are some of your future plans?
We are currently polishing up “Rizik”, the second game in the “Mzito” universe. “Riziki” is all about African music and rhythm and we put these two elements perfectly within the game. Check out our website for a short clip of the game. We hope to release this title towards the end of September 2023.
As stated earlier, we are also focusing our efforts towards understanding the African consumer in terms of games and how to provide value to them more efficiently through games. This of course leads us to building a scalable profit making Pan-African business that will enable us work on more games and create more jobs for people in the gaming industry in Africa.
We have learnt a lot in our journey and with every release we get better at both business and game development.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
(George) To be honest, I wouldn’t change much because the mistakes have made us understand our crafts better. Right out of college I became the CEO of a games development company and we have achieved some great things, being thrown right into the middle of the fire was hard but it has made me stronger, more focused and more determined than ever to make Weza a Pan-African brand, like the Disney of Africa.
I have even learned to say “We” more as compared to “I”. It has really become more of a team effort.
Maybe as a side note, if I could change one thing, I would start making games way earlier, probably even while still in high school or primary school, I would have way more experience by now.
Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read?
Some recommend books by James include:
Napoleon Hill, “Outwitting the Devil”, Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, “Extreme Ownership”, Lawrence Miller, “Barbarians to Bureaucrats, Corporate Life Cycle Strategies”, Ben Horowitz, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” and Napoleo Hill, “Think and Grow Rich”
YouTube channels and resources from James:
VALUETAINMENT, Slidebean, Dream It Ventures, Carta and Founders Institute.
Recommended YouTube channels on game development by George:
Game Makers Toolkit, AI and Games, Ask GameDev and Table Flip Games
Recommended books on game development by George:
Game Development Patterns, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels:, Game Feel and The Art of Game Design
Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
You can have a look at our LinkedIn profiles: George and James.
Also check out our website for our work and future plans: Weza.Africa
Bonus Question: What does success look like to you?
Success for us is building games that are amazing and provide value.
And also making Weza sort of like the Disney for Africa. Building such kind of global media experiences.
A business that is sustainable, provides value, is disruptive and provides opportunity to others in the Gaming and Entertainment space across Africa.
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Built by great Devs and Chief Kenyan Tech Twits or should I say Xss😅, Kirinyet Brian and Vincent Eliezer among other great minds who inspire a lot of other Developers in the Kenyan tech ecosystem.
They are also working on some other awesome product that we hope to highlight here soon. Check out the website and their Twitter for more.
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