Meet My Crib: The Leti Games Garage Edition

This week the Leti team moved our office, moving a colossal 100,000 millimeters (100m) to our new office space, right next door to our former office space.

Leti Games, is now next door from the main Meltwater Incubator building at East Legon.

We are recreating our own version of famous start-ups that started from a garage. Even though technically we did not start in a garage, we are starting the next phase of the Leti story and it is befitting we do so from a start-up garage.

We are still setting up and will post pictures when we make the space uniquely Leti. In the meantime, Meet Our Crib!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Read the story of how it all began from the perspective of our CTO and Co-Founder, Wesley Kirinya through a piece on gaming in Kenya on Polygon.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/7/3/4483276/kenya-games-industry

Related articles

• What It’s Like Being The First Game Developer In Your Entire Country (buzzfeed.com)

Leti Games Partnership Cocktail sets the agenda for partnerships

Leti Games last Thursday, June 27, 2013, set the agenda for conversations and action plans around potential partnerships through an event at the British Council. The event was held in collaboration with the British Council and the Young Creative Entrepreneur (YCE) programme of the British Council, which Eyram Tawia, CEO of Leti Games, emerged the 2012 winner.

Leti Games brought together people from across a range of industries to expose them to ideas and case studies around the market opportunities inherent in gaming, mobile comics and interactive applications. The invited guests included creative and marketing agencies; brands and corporate companies; public institutions; mobile operators, content distributors and device manufacturers; publishing and printing companies and retail companies.

The event was attended by individuals from private and public organisations such as IPMC, SMSGH, NAFTI, MUSIGA, The US State Department and the European Delegation to Ghana.

Eyram delivered a highly entertaining and interactive presentation, focused on ideas to get business and public institutions present thinking differently about what they do. The presentation began with an impassioned introduction from Eyram which embodied the tone and nature of the event, a snippet of which is quoted below.

We need to know you. We need to know what you do. We need to know what you can do. We need to do things differently. We know you want to do things differently.

We need to redefine advertising. We need to define telecoms, we need to redefine monetization, We need to redefine education. We need to redefine sports, governance and employment, all through interactive entertainment.

Infrastructure is ripe for innovation to happen. Leti is this innovation.

Thank you to all our guests and their organizations for gracing the occasion and making it a success. We are delighted to have made new acquaintances and reiterated our commitment to existing partners and friends of Leti Games.

Leti Games is ready and open for business. Let the partnership conversations begin.

Related articles

• Leti Games CEO Interviewed on BBC Newsday (letiarts.wordpress.com)
• MoTI, Google launch ‘Innovation Ghana’ to support SMEs (ghanabusinessnews.com)

The True Ananse: Synopsis

Kweku Ananse is one of Africa’s most popular legends. The Leti Team as part of our African Legends initiative is creating a super hero, based in part on Ananse. Our story of Ananse the superhero, has two main thematic settings, Ancient Africa and Present Day. We give you a glimpse into the world of Ananse, The True Ananse.

The Story

Long ago in the skies reigned gods under whom men dwelled. All authority was in the hands of Odumankoma, king of the gods. Four wings of rulership existed under him but yet only three gods ruled with Odumankoma. The three paramount gods: “Esuo”, the god of water; “Asaase Yaa”, the goddess of earth and “Oja”, god of fire.

Kweku Ananse, the spider god, crafty and cunning by nature, had ambitions to be powerful and mighty, a legend among gods and men. He pleaded before the king for an opportunity to prove himself worthy to rule as a paramount god.

Odumankoma as a just king allowed Ananse to go on a quest to prove himself. Ananse returned to the sky kingdom victorious in his quest. Ananse was deemed worthy and crowned the god of wisdom, the final wing of paramount rulership bestowed by Odumakoma. His duty was to serve as a mediator between the gods and mankind.

With time, greed and ambition took over his heart and in his lustful quest to rule the earth, he created confusion between man and the gods. Ananse’s conspiracy was discovered. In a state of deep anger, Odumankoma pronounced the ultimate punishment on Ananse, banishment from the sky kingdom.

He was cast unto earth, a cursed statue, forgotten by all until recent days. The cursed statue of Ananse is discovered and worshipped until fate brings Ananse and an innocent boy, Selasi Rockson together, his vessel for reawakening.

Ananse vows to find a way back to his former glory, as a paramount god in the sky kingdom. Odumankoma sensing Ananse’s awakening tasks his paramount gods to recapture the traitor Ananse. Faced with a society built around modern technology (not the power of the gods), riddled with crime and corruption, Ananse decides to use his powers for good, his chance to regain his place.

Will Osuo, Oja and Asaase Yaa recapture Ananse before he can prove himself worthy of pardon? What will his vessel Selasi do, when he discovers he is possessed by a god? How will the society react to Ananse and the powerful three, forces forgotten as folklore. The adventure begins….

Join the adventure in Ananse: The Origin. Spread the word and connect with The True Ananse on Facebook, Twitter, Google+

Leti Games CEO Interviewed on BBC Newsday

It has been an interesting few weeks, with a torrent of media and press events for Leti Games. The latest in the line of such media appearances, is the Leti Games, CEO, Eyram Tawia appearing on one of BBC’s biggest programmes, Newsday.

Here is a snippet about Newsday from Wikipedia

Newsday is BBC World Service’s international early morning news and current affairs programme which premiered on the 23 July 2012. The programme is co-anchored by Lawrence Pollard in London and Lerato Mbele in Johannesburg. Replacing The World Today and Network Africa, the programme will have a particular focus on Africa. It is expected that the programme will have one of the largest, if not the largest, audience of any radio programme in the world.

Wikipedia

Here is a quote from the interview:

Our CEO has now rubbed shoulders with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Malawian President Joyce Banda, Donald Kaberuka and Julius Malema, who have all been previously interviewed on Newsday.

We are proud to have been on Newsday.

Now go sign up to our Leti Games Community newsletter, so we can tell you when we release the comic and game for our first superhero, Ananse.

Leti Games speaks at GDC 2013

We did it!! Yes that is not the most poetic way to start a post but it reflects what we feel perfectly. Yesterday (Tuedsay, March 26) the co-founders of Leti Games, Eyram and Wesley, made the whole team proud.

Their talk, “The Emerging Landscape of African Game Development”, at the Localization Smmit at GDC 2013, was very well received (other words were used to better describe this…. for our ears only). The unique profile of Leti Games, not just a mobile game company, but a pioneer helping create the game industry in Africa, attracted a good audience.

We are not the only ones who think their talk was interesting, as even before the talk it was highly anticipated. Gamasutra knows what is what when it comes to the game industry and they highlighted the Leti Games talk, as one of their recommended lectures.

Another note worthy commentary on the talk and Leti Games at GDC 2013 in general is from Buzzfeed. It makes us feel proud to be part of this effort.

Their talk, entitled “The Emerging Landscape of African Game Development,” is something of an overstatement: Leti is only the second full-time game studio in sub-Saharan Africa. (excluding South Africa, which has a limited but significant history of game development). The two founders of Leti are not just the most promising company in the West African game industry; they are the West African game industry.

Buzzfeed [Article on Leti Games]

The co-founders are representing the whole team of awesome designers, story writers and developers at GDC and we are enjoying and revelling in it as much as we can from Ghana. However we do not think anyone here at the office can beat out this ear to ear grin from Eyram and Wesley.

As soon as we have access to a link for the video of the talk, we will post it up here for everyone to see. Until then you can enjoy some of the photos from just before the talks.

You can also find our complete GDC 2013 album on Facebook for all the photos we have from GDC 2013.

Once again, congratulations to the whole Leti Games team (in Ghana and Kenya) and our partners past, present and future.

Related articles

• Leti Games at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2013 (letiarts.wordpress.com)

Leti Games at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2013

Leti Games is proud to have both our CEO/Co-Founder, Eyram Akofa Tawia and CTO/Co-Founder, Wesley Kirinya as speakers at the Game Developers Conference 2013.

The Game Developers Conference is the premier international gaming event of the year. It brings creative teams, engineers and business development teams from all over the world together to meet and exchange ideas on the interactive games industry.

GDC 2013 is taking place from March 25th to March 29th, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Sessions at the GDC are divided into seven tracks and eight summits, dealing with a diverse number of topics.

Courtesy (Maria J. Avila Lopez/Mercury News)

The conference begins with a full lineup of summits on Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 focusing on the emerging trends in a constantly evolving games industry.

Summits include lectures, panels, postmortems and more, to foster community-building within specific sectors of the game industry.

Eyram and Wesley are speakers for the Localization Summit. They will present a lecture titled “The Emerging Landscape of African Game Development” on Tuedsay, March 26.

Here is a quote from the organizers about the importance and goal of the sessions within the localization summit.

“Game localization is a vital function of the ever-expanding global game industry as it’s responsible for half of the industry’s total revenue stream. Successful game publishers and developers realize that localized versions of their games can drive revenues and increase international appeal. “

Emerging markets like Africa provide new opportunities and challenges for localization. Eyram and Wesley are speakers because they represent a wealth of knowledge and experience, about localization in game development in the nascent and fledging African games industry.

To Eyram and Wesley, we say More VIM!!

We will be following their exploits at the GDC through photos, tweets and videos, when they become available.

Related articles

• GDC 2013 adds unique Summit talks on DIY indie games, African game dev (gamasutra.com)