Xbox Gaming in South Africa

2upGamers appeared seemingly out of nowhere, rising from the ashes of many hours of brainstorming, daydreaming and pizza-fueled meditation to bring a new concept in community building for gamers in the Cape Town area. To set things off good and proper, the 2upGamers team put together a launch party and invited the local gaming community to come along to witness the birth of this new venture.

The shadow of dusk crept across Rondebosch, Cape Town, as we gathered outside the Rygersdal Sports Club, a number of familiar faces dotted amongst the crowd - as it turns out, a lot of those in attendance had been getting their kill on at the Battlefield 3 launch event just a week prior. Kindred spirits once more, we were ushered into the event hall, neatly decked out with a bank of monster flat screens, rows of chairs, and - much to the pleasure of many - a cash bar lurking in the corner.

Gamers! Were you there?

Once we had found our seats, 2upGamers co-founder Glenn Alexander stepped up to welcome the gathered crowd and gave us a quick run-down of what to expect for the rest of the evening, and then called the rest of the 2upGamers crew up to introduce themselves. As you would imagine, co-founders Hylton Arendse, Ashley O’Neill, and Zaida Kamish are avid gamers (well, Zaida is a competitive Foosball player), and they each gave us a quick recap of their gaming roots and credentials. Listening to them speak, their passion for the local gaming community was clear in every word. Glenn summarized the future plans for 2upGamers: monthly events, interesting industry-related speakers, and a platform for local gamers to get together, chat and share ideas, and then he opened the floor for the two special guests for the evening.

First up was Ramone Pickover, Category Manager for Games at Kalahari.com, a pleasant chap who seems to genuinely have gamers in mind when it comes to service delivery. He detailed Kalahari's commitment to not only getting the best pre-order bonuses, limited editions and more for the big games, but also to making sure that, when pre-ordered, these games show up on our doorsteps on launch day. Obviously, faced with a room full of serious gamers he was always going to put his best foot forward, but Ramone really did come across as a guy with the best intentions to put gamers first.

Ramone Pickover, Category Manager for Games at Kalahari.com

Also dedicated to putting gamers first is MWEB, with Online Gaming Manager Desmond Kurz (aka @bosbvok) stepping up to remind us how important we are to the MWEB business model. This goes beyond just the physical commitment of improving connectivity and bandwidth allocation for gaming servers, and extends to new initiatives which MWEB GameZone are embarking on to promote the industry. It's a multi-phase plan, with the ultimate goal being that South Africa finally gets some recognition from the international gaming world as a serious player. With that in place, according to Kurz, we will then have the pulling power to approach the big guys on the topics of local dedicated servers for console gaming and more. The plan itself is based on building up the local competitive gaming scene, by both working with existing gaming clans to help make an impact on the international arena as well as with a new development program to train novice gamers in the art of competitive multiplayer. This Gamers in Beta (or GIB) program will be a stepping stone to increase the pool of players from which the best clans can be formed for competition. It's clearly a plan which looks at the long game, an approach which can yield serious results if handled properly.

Gamers doing what they know best: gaming!

With a shipment of pizzas just about ready to be rolled into the venue, our last speakers had to make it quick - the smell of cheesy goodness lingering in the air was taking its toll on the crowd, and attention spans were being tested. Ashraf 'Zombie Hunter' and Ryan 'SA Phoenix' came up to chat a bit about the Cape Town Showdown event, a competitive beat-em-up tournament with intentions to find the best fighters in town. As a quick show of hands pointed out, most of the people in the room had a passing interest in fighting games, but had never really thought of taking it to a competitive level - something which these guys are aiming to change. We were shown a clip from the most recent event, as well as a quick look at the scale of such competitions overseas; it's incredible how seriously some of those people take their Shoryukens and Hadokens over there. The point of their presence at the 2upGamers event was to garner support for their movement - most of us conceded that we didn't even know these events were happening, so it's clear that the community needs to work together to promote these things.

It's this focus on the development of the local gaming community that really stands out as the raison d'etre for 2upGamers. We are still a relatively small community, not just in Cape Town, but as a country when compared to the major international markets. As a platform for community development, 2upGamers is a much needed entity - and something we need to get behind if we want to see growth come from it. Before the launch event disintegrated into a fantastic mess of pizza, gaming conversation, Marvel VS Capcom 3 ass-kickings at the hands of the pros, Forza 4 time-trials and an impromptu Gears of War board game session, Glenn Alexander outlined plans for next months 2upGamers gathering: things are in place for an even bigger gathering, set for the first Friday of December (that's 2 December, by our calculations). As a Cape Town based gamer, I urge those of you from the Mother City to save the date, cancel whatever you had planned, and secure your place for next months event.

You've got some Gears of War in your board game.

The second 2upGamers gathering will be finalised soon, so look out for a follow up post on XG with all the details.