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Interested in game development as a career? Get yourself to the Home Coded stand at rAge

While it’s easy to cover all the AAA games that come out of places like the US and Japan, people often forget that South Africa has a booming gaming development industry. Not only does Wits offer a degree in game design, but our editor Nick recently spent the weekend at A MAZE – a festival dedicated to local games. Now, if you want to get involved, rAge 2015 in a few weeks time is your best bet.

Since 2012 a portion of the rAge floor has been dedicated to Home Coded – a stand where local developers can meet and show off their projects. Anyone with a ticket to the expo can come and speak directly to them, get advice and direction and even play early builds of the games.

This year, in addition to the regular Home Coded content, the stand will have a focus on job creation. rAge contributor and In addition to showing off locally made games, the hope appears to be to inspire others to enter the industry. In a press release about the event, local game dev Geoff Burrows from Zero Degrees Games says that spending on games is growing at a steady rate in South Africa:

The world of gaming, although relatively small in South Africa, is showing a steady growth rate.  This means that sustainable career opportunities are being created, as well as an increase in revenue contributing to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  Globally gaming is an industry valued at an estimated US$91.5-billion; with South Africa in dire need for job creation, gaming is well positioned to provide the platform.

The release also points out that:

The gaming industry in South Africa has grown by 5% since 2003 with a 82% revenue increase from 2013 to 2014. This equates to a R24-million jump in revenue.

That’s something that’s backed up by PwC’s annual report on entertainment in South Africa, in which its regularly pointed out that games are the fastest growing sector of the media economy.

With the raw numbers pointing to a bright future for those in the industry, we’re going to end this story with a list of South African-made games which have gone on to great success as well as international coverage:

If you’d like a full list of the games, check out the Steam Curator page managed by makegamesSA. Keep checking back to htxt.africa too, as we’ll soon have a full review of STASIS.

[Image – rAge Expo]

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