When every millisecond counts
Slow internet speed is all that stands between Nigerian gamers and e-sports dominance
Bamgboye Ayodele, 27, dreamt of being a professional gamer. He holds down a regular job as a software developer at a financial institution, but when he’s at home in Yaba, Lagos, he can usually be found in his pyjamas in front of his Playstation or Xbox consoles.
Ayodele is good. He could compete with the very best in professional e-sports tournaments, but there is one thing holding him back: Nigeria’s notoriously sluggish internet speeds.
“Gaming in Nigeria is difficult,” Ayodele told the Mail & Guardian. Sometimes, between 1am and 4am, the connections are good enough to attempt to compete with players based in Europe, Asia and the Americas. But even then his connection speeds are slower than his competitors — which means that sometimes his character gets shot before he has even had the chance to notice the danger.
Ayodele believes that, when it comes to gaming, Nigeria’s talent pool is unmatched. But, like many other potential pros, he has gone into early retirement, unwilling to invest too much of his time and energy when technical factors prevent him from competing with the very best in the world.
Ping. Lag. Latency. Every Nigerian gamer knows these words, and what they mean for what should be a thriving local industry.
Latency, or ping, is the delay between when information is sent and when it manifests on screen. Lag occurs when there is a high latency or slow internet. These are all measured in milliseconds.
“There is no other way to go around it for now. So we have to make do with what we have,” Emmanuel Oyelakin, the president of Esports Nigeria, told the M&G.
Every millisecond counts. Oyelakin explains: “It’s actually quite tangible when you’re playing. Let’s say you’re playing a shooting game and you see an enemy coming ahead of you and want to pull your gun to shoot; that enemy shot you before you pulled your gun. But because of your own latency, you’re seeing that he wants to shoot, not knowing it’s shot already.”
This puts Nigerian competitors at an instant disadvantage on the global gaming scene. Even now, with e-sports surging in popularity because of the coronavirus-induced restrictions on other live sport, Nigeria is being left behind. A persistent issue with unstable power supply does not help. Nor does the failure of big game publishers to install local servers in Nigeria that may allow gamers to minimise the lag.
South Africa is the only African country with local servers for most major games.
Despite the challenges, there is still a healthy professional gaming scene in Nigeria. Israel Ayodeji, 25, for example, is defying the many odds to pursue his passion. In September 2019, he signed on to the Lagosbased pro-gaming team owned by Oyelakin, called the League of Extraordinary Gamers.
He is also a content creator and Nigerian community leader for PUBG Mobile, a battle royale game that involves a team of four players competing against other teams (in battle royale games, teams or individuals fight it out on a virtual battlefield until only one is left standing).
In this year’s inaugural La Cup D’africana, a PUBG Mobile community competition that saw more than 900 African teams compete against each other, Nigerian team Slime 4KT emerged victorious. This shows the potential of Nigerian teams — if only they could compete on a level playing field.
Earlier this year, PUBG’S publisher, Tencent Gaming, delivered on its promise that it would create a local server for sub-saharan Africa, which, according to Oyelakin, is a sign that games publishers are now taking Africa seriously. “It’s an awakening; it’s a sign of things to come in Nigeria,” he said.
The government is also taking e-sports seriously. Esports Nigeria was recently endorsed by Minister of Sports Sunday Dare. And last week, in a webinar to discuss the revival of sport in the post-coronavirus era, the minister said: “We are working on a plan that would produce … an industry-based sports policy that will turn sports into business.
“We are on the verge of launching e-gaming sports in Nigeria. It is the most suitable for the post-covid-19 era. Globally, it is a $138-billion business.”