Our new Adventure – Setting up a Gaming Institute in Mombasa

Mombasa is Kenya’s 2nd Largest City, the “Gateway” to Kenya – hosting one of Africa’s most strategic sea ports. The port serves a good chunk of Eastern Africa – but that is aside from the point – Mombasa for myself and Aly Salim (Co-founder at AAA Platforms) is our dear home. We grew up in Mombasa, our families are all in Mombasa, and we feel at home in Mombasa. Between myself and Aly we have been active shaping up Innovation Hubs (we set up the pioneer innovation hub in Mombasa known as SwahiliBox) and Maker Spaces (also setting up the 1st Maker Space known as MakersHub). We are now embarking on a new journey – the setup of the one and only Gaming & Multimedia Institute in Mombasa.

The AAA Gaming & Multimedia Institute

Gaming is not only just a passion for myself and Aly Salim – for us – it is a starting point for greater things to come for Mombasa and for the region as a whole.

Over the past week, we had participated for the 1st time in the Global Game Jam. With fresh and green folks – and managed to get 3rd Place in Kenya. It is a great start – validating the progress we have made in the past month with our Capacity Building pilot.

We have been building traction slowly, and teaching ourselves a lot over the past few months. Over the past year, myself and Aly have worked on a number of R&D projects. Some of which include:

1. Modifying and Tinkering Game Engine Cores (Tinkering the Love2D Game Engine).
2. Creating Extensions for Game Engines (Defold Engine).
3. Modifying some Open Source Games (GBRausers from the team at Defold).
4. Our submission to the Global Game Jam 2021 (for which we developed a Game known as The Lost Hero – under the theme Lost and Found).

Focus Areas

Although at the moment our focus has mostly been oriented around Open Source Technology – we aim not to be limited in scope in the long run. Our focus will also be more holistic – we want to be able to capacity build the region and create initiatives around:

1. Game Art.
2. Game Design.
3. Game Engineering.
4. Game Technology Engineering.
5. Multimedia.
6. Industrial, Startup & Corporate Application Areas – for things like AR / VR and 3D technologies.

Capacity Building

Obviously Capacity Building is at the core of what we are looking to do. We are a Social Enterprise, and we would love to have our core community empowered to be capable to develop on top of technology and create breathtaking experiences on Gaming and Multimedia.

Working Together

We are looking forward to great collaboration with Industry Partners and Leaders in Game Technology and Multimedia.

We would especially begin by thanking Douglas Ogeto – Ludique Works, Abdihakim Hussein – Unity Evangelist and close friend of ours, Ben Roberts – Liquid Telecom – and obviously folks like Johana Riquier from Unity Technologies and Jake Manion from Internet of Elephants for having been instrumental in not only shaping the African Gaming Eco-system – but also being inspirations for most of us folks who are looking to setup Gaming Initiatives to work within the scope of the emerging African Gaming and Multimedia eco-system.

Do reach out to us at info at aaa-platforms dot com if interested in joining us in this amazing journey. I believe it is an interesting time to be shaping up Multimedia. And although we are a garage setup at the moment, I believe the future is bright for where we would be 6 months from now.