Convergence Partners investee company SkillPod discusses growth and prospects of casual gaming industry in South Africa. Mark van Diggelen, CEO and founder of SA casual and social gaming company SkillPod, says that although game development in SA is not as big as it is internationally, local programmers are taking a keener interest in it as a career path.

“In the past two years, there has been more interest, but it will still take two or three more years before we start seeing a real increase,” he says.

Casual gaming has enjoyed a boom in recent years, spurred by the growth of smart devices. Companies such as Apple and Google have also made it easier for potential developers to distribute their content through application stores.

One of the most popular and addictive casual games is Angry Birds, developed by Finland’s Rovio Mobile. Angry Birds reached a milestone in sales on Monday, with 10m downloads across various platforms. US company Zygna, which makes FarmVille and CityVille, has also cashed in. Zynga was recently valued at US$3bn.

Some social games now incorporate micropayments, which represent a new revenue stream for developers. However, it has been tough for SA developers to use these channels because they’re not all available locally.

However, he says companies like Amazon, which has made contributing content to stores more accessible to people outside the US, are changing the game. “Nokia realised SA developers couldn’t get their content into its store, and now helps developers load their content,” he says.

SA companies have been slow to take advantage of the growing social gaming market, but Van Diggelen says easier distribution and better education has started to increase the profile of games development in SA.

“There are now courses at SA tertiary institutions specifically tailored for game development, though there aren’t enough. When the education system starts to focus on the space, South Africans will start seeing game development as a viable career option,” he says.

Casual gaming in SA remains a relatively untapped market — only 10% of SkillPod’s customer base is local. The bulk is in Europe.

SkillPod has developed a platform for social and casual gaming that is being used by publishers and game specialists. In SA, media companies Media24 and Independent Group use it for their casual game services online.

The company has about 750 games on its platform. They integrate fully with micropayment services and social network platforms.

See attached Article from TechCentral

The Convergence Partners stand was a hive of activity for the duration of the event (especially when our gorgeous ladies served up some great cocktails at the end of day 1). Companies in the Convergence Partners stand that were formally exhibiting at AfricaCom included Seacom, Convergence Wireless Networks (comprising WiA and Intra), Intelsat New Dawn Satellite Project, Plessey, Comsol, Integrat, Skillpod Media, Bloodhound, Inala, Convergence Border Management Solutions, as well as the Convergence Partners Foundation.

AfircaCom also coincided with the media launch of Convergence Partners’ latest project, FibreCo (see below blog).

The main themes discussed at the conference this year centred around:

• infrastructure sharing and managed services – in light of declining ARPUs, operators are seeking significant cost reduction models;
• rural connectivity – the next major untapped market, although sustainable, scalable models remain challenging; and
• the continuing shift from voice services (still the majority of the industry revenue base) to data and VAS, driven by the proliferation of broadband hungry smartphones.

Skillpod Media CEO Mark van Diggelen said: “AfricaCom was SkillPod Media’s first exposure to a mobile / telco trade event, we used it to showcase our new online and mobile platforms and experienced resoundingly positive feedback from the industry, resulting in a number of key contacts been met, with whom discussions have started. Further to this the professionalism of the Convergence stand drew in a plethora of delegates, all interested in better understanding the services on offer by SkillPod, again resulting in a lot of contacts being made with industry players, wishing to provide services to our overall offering and make use of a number of our services for their solutions. Overall the event was a resounding success, in that our new solutions were warmly received, we managed to network with key contacts, either at the stand or at the various networking events and more so we interacted with a number of key industry players that highlighted a number of opportunities, that we’d previously never considered.

According to Darren Morgan, Head of Sales at Comsol, “AfricaCom was a wonderful experience this year, it’s always great to be under one roof with all the peers of your industry. It’s rare to have all vendors, suppliers, integrators and customers from a certain industry in the same place at the same time and this certainly makes the event a memorable one. This year we were lucky enough to share a stand with fellow companies involved with the Convergence Partners family and that certainly added to the event for us.  A fantastic experience all round”.

Integrat Director, Leonard Cremer said: “The Convergence stand was a great initiative and Integrat will definitely be joining again next year. Integrat not only benefited by exhibiting at the show but also believes it extracted real value from the networking between the Convergence companies”.

We look forward to seeing everyone again in 2011!

See attached pics

SkillPod in conjunction with the eThekwini Municipality have developed a series of (mostly) indigenous games or variations thereon to encourage children and people who are unfamiliar with computers to engage with them in a fun and practical way.  This is a proven learning tool and will lead to an increase in digital skills amongst those persons playing the games.  In addition, the games are in isiZulu, to enable users to play/learn in their home language but also to encourage English speakers to become more comfortable with isiZulu.

See attached link

Skillpod has launched its new mobile gaming platform, Gazuma. This drive onto the mobile phone is an extension of the highly successful online casual gaming platform developed. The platform currently has 20 mobile game titles, across a number of game genres. SkillPod will be adding 12 – 18 new titles a month. All the game titles can be fully customised, re-branded, translated and have the potential to include advertisers branding in them. The platform has been setup to manage promotions in the form of advertising, sponsorship and game sales. Publishers further have the option of offering the mobile games site as a free to play, subscription based and or time based access options.

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