Enter Africa Lagos Interviews: Adebayo Adegbembo, Programmer and Founder of Genii Games
The founder of Genii Games tells Adefoyeke Ajao how Genii Games has been making African cultures - specifically languages - fun to learn.
Please tell us about yourself.
I am Adebayo Adegbembo, a creator with a flair for computer programming and making stuff! Though originally trained as an Engineering Surveyor at the University of Lagos, my professional career has been in software development primarily at Genii Games as the lead developer of culturally themed gamified apps.
When, how and why did you get into making games? What’s the inspiration behind Genii Games?
I got into game development around 2011 through a combination of my interest, self-taught lessons and the emergence of technology hubs at the time. Specifically, my interest and drive was enabled by the support of the Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB Nigeria), whose emergence at the time included a hackathon which I participated in leading to the birth of Genii Games. Why I got into making games is primarily out of my interest in learning and making stuff. My approach to learning or picking up programming skills has always been with the view to bringing my product ideas alive. Thus, when I picked up Adobe Flash Professional (now called Adobe Animate) and its Action Script programming language, I was fascinated by the interactivity I could create with them, thus leading to my first foray into educational games with a cultural theme.
The inspiration for Genii Games has evolved over time but one that remains is my love for making African cultures — specifically languages — fun for kids to learn. Simply put, it’s the intersection between my love for indigenous African cultures, art, programming and making valuable stuff (products…).
How do you source content and contributors for your apps? How do you put together your syllabi and what are the fundamentals?
A lot of what is today has been through an iterative process. Everything from the relationships or network to the content themselves has been formed and is still being formed over the last 9 years. In terms of putting together the syllabi, I’d credit one of my earliest partners, Aderoju Adefarakan, a teacher, for the foundational role she played in its framework. Her background and interest in education, arts and culture did help with the foundation of what we’ve built on. What’s followed is changes driven by feedback from users over time. In terms of sourcing content, it’s down to a growing network of people with shared interests. To put things in context, I’ve worked with collaborators such as language teachers who taught me in Secondary School (20 years ago!), different illustrators, to my colleagues from the YALI Mandela Washington Fellowship drawn across the African continent.
From your experience at Genii Games, how would you describe attitudes to app-based learning in Nigerian school settings? How and why do you think we should be rethinking teaching methods, especially regarding elements of culture and identity and how can gaming be integrated into this?
I do think technology adoption is growing and will continue to in Nigeria. With respect to app-based learning from an institutional perspective, I think we’d have to also look at the wider context. Specifically, connectivity - data costs, internet speed, access - educational curriculum, teachers, existing books and approach to teaching/learning etc. While Genii Games has mainly catered to individual users as opposed to institutions like schools, rethinking that approach would require working more in conjunction with schools and related stakeholders to meet their specific needs within the context of obvious constraints in our peculiar environment - resources, internet access, actual needs, existing curriculum. Thus, gamification and institutional adoption cannot be isolated from the wider foregoing context.
What are the biggest rewards and challenges of what you do?
A memorable reward is how much it’s unravelled me as a person. Everything from my self-discovery, places, travel, people/network/relationships, cultures not to mention laying the foundation for new career paths and ideas.
That said, my biggest reward today is truly in the value created for new and existing customers as evident in the feedback. In the end, when there’s not at least 1 person who finds it valuable then my motivation will fade off. Hopefully, my kids will find them valuable to keep feeding my interest.
Challenges for me have evolved and continue to but I’d say right now, it’s finding the balance among new areas of interest, career and a young family. An interesting challenge by the way 😊
What’s your experience marketing your games and monetising your content?
My experience marketing and monetising Games is that value is key! I’ve mainly played in the App space but stayed long enough to see various monetisation trends over time. Monetisation and marketing on the App Stores (Google Play and Apple Store) are a given but I’ve also seen the value of licensing to third parties pick up in the last couple of years. The latter offers more value and alternatives for income generation. In the end, a developer has to be open to tweaking his or her product to take advantage of these opportunities. The biggest take for me has been redeveloping my product to be more data-driven. That has resulted in greater control over monetisation channels. Simply put, having a backend integration to your game can mean the difference between handing over all control of your monetisation to the App Stores who take a chunk of it and being able to define various monetisation channels including licensing, partnerships, affiliate marketing.
How would you describe Nigeria’s gaming industry? What have you learnt about it so far?
I think it’s growing in the way our technology sector has been over the last 10 years - self-taught approach to learning based on individual interests and passion especially among young people then organizational/institutional support to foster proper communities and ventures. It’s a process that starts with a somewhat individualistic approach then eventually gravitates to an institutional one as other enablers come on board. I’ve attended the Lagos Comic Con in the past and seen amazing works by folks that’ll only get better, bigger and greater!
What’s the one thing you wish you’d known about the industry when you started? With the benefit of hindsight, what advice would you give to your younger self?
When I started, I didn’t care about anything other than to make stuff! In hindsight, I’d say, it helps to understand that a gaming business isn’t any different from any other business in that it thrives not just on individual passion but a proper understanding of organizational structures, marketing, finances and all other components in the value chain of any business. With a proper understanding of that, one can better define which role best suits him or her or what structure to go with.
An advice to my younger self would thus be - read other books besides programming ones!
How many languages do you speak and how would you rate your fluency in each one? What was your most helpful learning tool?
I speak Yoruba and English fluently. Igbo comes next though I’d rate myself 4/10 in Igbo. My most useful learning tool have been the Genii Games Apps. The iterative process that goes into developing and vetting the apps means I get to pick up bits and pieces of the languages.
What are you currently working on and what’s on the road map for Genii Games?
Right now, I’m working on adding more content to the Genii Games App - a single platform for all related content on African cultural learning resources for kids and beginners. Right now, we are completing the integration of existing apps like the Igbo101 into the Genii Games App plus completing a series of stories narrated in Yoruba by Agba Inaki, a Yoruba cultural social media sensation. It’s called Yoruba103 and will also be available on the Genii Games App in a month or two. Lastly, we just completed work on a series of books that should be rolled out in the coming months.
To know more about Adebayo Adegbembo’s work at Genii Games, follow him on on Instagram @geniigames ,on Twitter @Genii_Games, or visit his websites geniigames.com and geniigames.app
This interview series is part of Nigeria’s Gaming Industry: Opportunities, Challenges and Practices, an Enter Africa Lagos project supported by Goethe-Institut Nigeria.
