Zimbabwe’s game-development conversation is moving beyond the question of who is making games to ask what support helps those projects survive. GameOn, facilitated by The TechVillage, says its current iteration is focused mainly on research and training, with partners including Village Consult and ShiftSpace Technologies and support from the IGDA Foundation.

The initiative says it is preparing a freely available guide for organisations that want to run game-development programmes. It also plans profiles of Zimbabwean developers and professional gamers, an ecosystem-building workshop, and a five-part workshop series for developers. The project says it will seek input on workshop priorities rather than assume in advance what local developers need. These are planned activities; the public project page does not give a calendar or report that the workshops have already taken place. (GameOn project page)

Making money remains part of the brief

GameOn identifies monetisation as a major challenge for local developers and says its research is examining how studios can collect revenue from audiences at home. That is a practical issue for a sector where a game can attract interest but still struggle to turn local play into sustainable income.

An earlier 2022 ecosystem report by the Interledger Foundation offers a historical snapshot, not a current census: it reported that 19 of 23 developers surveyed had monetised games, and eight of those 19 said they were profitable. Those small-sample figures are now several years old, but they underline why updated research matters. (Interledger Foundation report, 2022)

Research is only the starting point

A map, guide and workshop series can make an emerging community easier to see and connect. Their value will ultimately depend on whether developers can use them to find collaborators, test business models and reach players. GameOn’s emphasis on both ecosystem support and monetisation makes the initiative worth following, while its planned outputs remain promises to measure against future results.