Lights whirled and flashed as 34,002 gaming, comic and geek-culture fans descended on the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg for rAge 2018.
SA’s longest-running annual video-gaming, computer, technology and geek-culture exhibition was packed to the brim with enthusiastic fans in various forms of dress, enthusiastically bashing buttons at the gaming stations of their choice.
The scene mirrored Comic-Con not three weeks earlier, which oddly — save the many stands in the bottom echelons of the fair — seemed to be dominated by gaming hardware stations battling it out for the 40,000 wide-eyed geeks’ attention.
It was evident attending these festivals that there is a frantic bid to get a hold over SA’s growing gaming industry, which cracks nearly R100m a year. This is no doubt in part due to the increase in boundary-crossing games such as Fortnite, the biggest online free game in the world with 125-million active players across PC, console and mobile platforms. SA has experienced an unprecedented rise in casual gamers looking to cross over to the hardcore lines, so it comes as little surprise that brands are starting to fight hard for them.
Though our economy is on life support, the ICT exhibitions that showcase gaming products locally are increasing in size year by year, and by 2022 the market will have grown more than 22%-25%
One of these is Vodafone 4U, which sponsored both rAge 2018 and rAge’s eSports subsidiary Rush. “By backing the most popular games in the tournament we wanted to make sure the association was there in terms of Vodacom 4U, to unlock the fact that we want to be the youth’s preferred connectivity partner,” says Bronwyn Makeen, MD of Vodacom 4U and Chatz Connect.
The PC hardware companies have a similar approach. “We’re definitely seeing a shift from endemic to nonendemic partners. Brands want to reach audiences through eSports. It’s a very exciting shift for them and brands like Alienware,” says Vasili Girasis, Bravado Gaming’s chief business development officer.
Though our economy is on life support, the ICT exhibitions that showcase gaming products locally are increasing in size year by year, and by 2022 the market will have grown more than 22%-25%. “I think it will grow even more; in the past it was only Asus and Mercer focusing on the [local] gaming market but now everyone sees that gaming is very profitable,” says Jasmine Lin, product and marketing manager for Sadec and Asus in SA.
She sees this increase in interest being in direct proportion to the rise in casual gaming. “Looking at the global figures of Dell and Lenovo, their strategy seems to be doing very aggressive pricing.”
Lenovo has visibly upped the marketing of its Legion range since the beginning of the year, and Alienware and parent company Dell have been making serious moves in their sponsorship of beloved local eSports brand Bravado across the gender lines. “This strategy is working as we see their market share increase quite a bit globally, inching ever closer to Asus, whose Republic of Gamers range is still seen as the world leader in the gaming department.”
International awards and praise aside, locally it’s HP that dominates the market. Its brand is so strong that it is able to sell its products for much higher prices than other brands, even if they are very similar, thanks to the ingrained local perception, says Lin. Having a giant lit-up virtual reality stand at the likes of Comic-Con can’t hurt either.
No wonder Absa took a stand at rAge for all the fans who would need to take out loans to make their high-score level dreams come true. The money one needs to throw at PC gaming to remain competitive is astounding, with some rigs costing more than R100,000 in custom parts alone. And yet you would be surprised to learn that more than 25% of hardcore gamers don’t have a problem with changing up their hardware if there are newer and better set-ups available.
Getting hands-on on the Asus ROG Strix Scar gl504 laptop launched at Comic-Con, it’s easy to see why new tech is so appealing. Compared with my older machine, this monster runs ridiculously smoothly. Whether it is firing up a game on Steam or trying to make your way through Twine Peaks or Fortnite, the laptop eats the lag and delivers majestic graphics on a rainbow LED lit-up platter thanks to its “fan overboost” world-class cooling system.
Looks-wise, the camo may not be for everyone but this isn’t a laptop for everyone. This machine is for a specific market, a market that not only has no problem dropping R30,000 for a laptop that will most likely have to be changed in two years, but one that also enjoys programming their preferred keyboard lighting set-up.
However, with the surprise announcement of Google Chrome’s in-browser cloud play two weeks ago, the launch of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Microsoft working on its own gaming cloud division in correlation with Xbox, the future of gaming may well move beyond the machine sooner than the big brands and your bank loans might like.
Who wouldn’t want a world where graphic cards last longer than six months? Let’s hope our internet and international server connections are sorted out by then.
• McKeown is a gadget and tech trend writer.
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