Though it is part of our history many young Africans (myself included) cringe at being characterized by drums, spears, and war paint. But one innovative company is hoping to change the implications of those descriptions. With their creation of a virtual Africa circa 1200 AD, Rapid Reality is hoping their game Africa MMO, a multiplayer online video game, sheds light on the misunderstood continent. The brains behind the Africa MMO game are John Sarpong, grandson of Ashanti king Prampeh of Ghana who runs Africast Global Media, Inc., a company that acquires and distributes a variety of Africa-focused media content, Adam Ghetti, a 19-year-old creative director at Rapid Reality, and Tracy Spaight, a 35-year-old lead designer who studied history at the PhD program at Cornell University and taught world history for five years, to include African cultures. Due to be released in December 2006, the game has already received the Most Innovative Concept Award at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 Expo). To add to the draw of the game the developers are making the game accessible to Africans on the continent as well. “Africa,” which will be distributed via the Internet, will be designed to run well even on the less powerful computers frequented by Africans in their countries’ cybercafes. While I’m not familiar with online gaming (I stopped playing video games at Super Mario Bros.) I am quite optimistic about the game.
Here are some quotes from the game’s developers:
“We’ll take African mythology, folklore and legend and take all the bits that are somewhat familiar – we want it to be new so that people experience something they’ve never encountered before any MMO before and it’s rich and deep and fun.”
“We felt very strongly that video games can help increase understanding and education about Africa and get the unmotivated public fired up about what is going on with Africa”
“The African mythology back from 1200 to 1400 A.D. is thousands of times richer than the J.R.R. Tolkien series of novels. Don’t get me wrong, he was an amazing individual with brilliant ideas. But that’s been milked for 80 years now.”
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