Mekan Games’ The President inspired by ex-American President
Kenyan Developer, Evans Kiragu and his team at Nairobi-based video gaming company, Mekan Games developed a game called The President in November 2021 that now has markets in the US. This was fulfilled during a training co-hosted by mobile games developing company, Crazylabs and play and earn South African company, Carry1st in Cape Town, South Africa. The programme was designed to teach the next generation of aspiring programmers, developers, designers and artists the fundamentals of designing and developing hyper-casual mobile games.
“The President becoming the number one casual game in the US on Android is an exciting feat for Mekan Games and the African game dev community,” co-founder and CEO of Carry1st, Cordel Robbin-Coker said. “The fact that this game was launched out of CrazyHubs Cape Town, Carry1st’s accelerator program, makes it even more special for me. This program provides aspiring developers with the skills and resources to build great games and reach millions of users globally.”
By July 2022, the game ranked highest on the US download charts. This is due to its focus on American character and ex-President, Donald Trump who is also identified for his online presence and controversies surrounding his permanent ban from Twitter – due to risk of further incitement of violence.
The game is a fictional simulator of Trump that lets gamers rule one of 163 countries and track choices.
“We decided to zone in on the humor, it is about being a powerful president but making very silly, hilarious decisions as you go. It worked like magic”, Kiragu noted in an interview explaining that he didn’t anticipate the huge receptiveness of the game after the four months training since he had previously created 80 mobile titles.
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Cordel stated that ‘The President‘ is a perfect example of untapped talent in Africa. He added that the increase in mobile phone usage has propelled the industry.
“It is there for the taking. The continent is the market easiest for us to dominate in a very short time. The current social awakening toward global content as seen in the global popularity of Afro Beat or Korean music can translate to games too,” he said.