The Game(th) Sense

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Africa! A continent with extraordinary potential in every domain— and the video game industry has a lot to gain from its vast reservoir of tales, stories, myths, and legends.

I resumed my exploration of the African gaming industry from the beginning, and instead of starting with internet research — or AI Chat bot, which I’ll get to later — I’m starting with something more personal: a conversation with someone I know, to share his impressions and experience. He’s a longtime friend: Yannick Sabze, founder of Gameroon.

The interview is split into three parts (the “interview trilogy”): 1 – The Why, 2 – The How, 3 – The Aftermath.

The Why.

GamethSense(GS) :Tell us about yourself and your journey into video game development.

Yannick Sabze (YS): Thank you for the opportunity this interview gives me to speak about a field we’re both passionate about. I’m Yannick Sabzé, a Cameroonian artist and entrepreneur, founder of Gameroon, a Cameroonian entertainment company. Gameroon produces work across video games, film, music, and literature. 

My first contact with video games goes back to age seven, when I discovered a Kung Fu Master arcade cabinet in a game room in my neighborhood.

The second, more impactful moment was discovering the Atari 520 ST belonging to the older brother of a childhood friend — we were neighbors. Poor guy had no life left, because his little brother and I had colonized his room to play.

When the time came for them to return to their home country (a French family whose parents had been in Cameroon for work), I begged my parents to buy me the Thomson TO8 that my friend’s brother owned. That computer — the first BASIC programs I ran by copying lines of code from manuals without necessarily understanding every function, even though I could sense the logic — plus, of course, all those hours spent playing video games as a kid, were what pushed me to become a video game developer.

A one-minute detour on the theme of “Why.” One of my favorite scenes from, The Matrix Reloaded, has the Merovingian say: “Why is the only real source of power. Without it, you are powerless — and this is how you come to me: without why, and so without power.”

So, it’s the fundamental question.

GS: Why choose to develop video games in a country and an environment that’s not only difficult — but sometimes even hostile?

YS : I named my company Gameroon deliberately. Out of devotion and passion for my country, and for the younger generation, who need constant reminding that nothing is easy, but that with persistence, great things are possible. The desire to do things differently, to step off the beaten path, and to bring originality — those were the driving factors behind creating this company in Cameroon.

A passion. A desire to be different. A wish to create something original. Beyond the environment. Beyond the difficulty.

This is a beginning — and now that we know the source of power, the Why, we’ll turn our attention in the next article to:

The “How”