Gaming in the 3rd World

I am sure that many Gamers out there take for granted their local computer or gaming store. Let me shed light on how it works in most of Africa.

First of all you will be lucky to find a computer salesperson who even knows or has even heard of Nvidia, or ATI, so looking for their products is almost impossible. You may find an odd spark here or there selling some of these products but they will be either used or like 2004 models.

I built a gaming comp last year. Its not even a fraction as good as those crazy Mods you see on gaming sites, but a least I can enjoy the latest games without much difficulty.

It took over 6 months to build not because I was lazy but because I had to wait for the parts to arrive and for them to be approved by customs, who by the way did not even believe half the stuff I was bring in were computer parts so some of them had to get held and inspected for some time. I ordered every single part except the case online. Thanks to ebay.com, one of the few sites with sellers willing to ship to africa, I now have a decent computer.

Once I had the basic components, I spent a month looking for a case that would fit every thing from the power supply to the mother board. Luckily I found one, not a good one, but it I had no choice.

The next battle is getting the games. Games are available, but you have to be like the son of an Oil driller to afford them. They go for approximately $80 a game, so I resort to buying online second hand games, which I hear the gaming companies want to ban because they are making nothing from the second hand sales. I hope this does go through otherwise I'm done.

Just download and illegal copy you say. Well it wold take me about 3 months to download a game of about 12 GB that means I would only have 4 games a year. Internet here is very slow and unreliable. Its only good enough to surf and update you virus signatures, thats it. Don't even get me started on Online gaming

When it comes to console gaming we are not too far behind. They are readily available, the only problem is the prices, so most people who have them from Asia or UK. Most new games are available, one to two months after the official release dates. Cost makes the good old trading games network very important and there are unwritten ratings for the members on basis of how well they take care of games. Get a scratch on the new copy of God Of War and that may be last new game you get traded to you for a long time.