If you’re interested in supporting Black voices in the gaming industry, look no further than these three titles that are either out now or currently in development. Here POCIT has made a list of three Black developers who’ve created their own video games. Shawn Alexander Shawn is the game designer, animator, visual artist, writer, and founder of Nuchallenger, an independent games and culture studio. Before creating his game – Treachery in Beatdown City – Shawn worked for almost five years at Rockstar games, where he worked on GTA IV Complete,
Rapper Nas has joined US private equity firm Andreessen Horowitz and Alphabet Inc.’s Google in an investment round for Africa-focused mobile gaming platform – Carry1st. Carry1st, a South African publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised $20 million Series A from the investors. The startup, launched by Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu in 2018, also received investments from Avenir and the founders of Chipper Cash, Sky Mavis and Yield Guild Games, took part. It wants to use this additional capital to scale interactive content across Africa, build the workforce and acquire new users. The
The Open Source Afro Hair Library, set to launch on Juneteenth 2023, will be the gaming world’s first free database of 3D-modeled Black hairstyles. Last year, Oakland-based artist and UC Santa Cruz assistant professor A.M. Darke started recruiting Black artists for the Open Source Afro Hair Library after she began to get frustrated with the lack of effort some artists put into ensuring Black characters had realistic Black hair. For example, Monster Hunter World players didn’t see any Black hairstyles added to the game until the release of a paid expansion nearly two years
Amira Virgil, also known XMiramira, has spent years developing realistic skin tones and custom content for Black Simmers. But she was properly refinished for her work back in 2020 when she was named one of Vice’s Humans Of The Year. Virgil played games in The Sims franchise for two decades, starting with console games like The Urbz and The Sims: Bustin’ Out, before playing The Sims 3, according to the outlet. But it became increasingly frustrating for her when she couldn’t pick characters that looked like her. And she wasn’t
Seventh-grader Serenity Marie and her mother Quyionah Wingfield recently launched Gen Connect Game, a platform to spark more family engagement through a curated list of questions and in-app activities. With the help of Carleton College’s Hack4Impact, a program of engineers that provide nonprofits with software, Wingfield and Serenity took what started as a brainstormed idea into an app that aims to tackle emotional isolation that comes with a loss in families for all generations. Gen Connect also comes with a specific Parent Guide, designed in tandem with Emory University, and provides tips on various topics
Tech executive and entrepreneur John Imah is one of those leading forces in business today. Imah joined Snapchat as the Global Head of Partnerships and Strategy in 2018, and as you can imagine – it’s a pretty busy job. Still, when he’s not at Snap, Imah works as a tech advisor to startups and some of our favorite A-list celebrities. His level of experience is beyond his years – he sold his first tech startup at age 15, and the age of 16, he sold his second company – a gaming firm
