Local gamers out to bask in the sun
Since its creation in 2019, Arudem—Uganda’s first professional gaming and e-sports brand—has morphed from a hobby for gamers to a vibrant pop culture engine.
Currently administered by a 10-strong team, Arudem has managed to build a community of about 5,000 individuals across the globe.
“We have received mostly positive feedback from our gaming community,” Ivan Kibuuka, the Arudem founder and team leader, tells this publication, adding, “We have found that people want to be affiliated with Arudem because then they’ll be seen as that person who is the cool gamer.”
Kibuuka says Arudem has “invested a lot in refining all our visual brand identity touch points to embody” coolness.
“We have found that it’s a little difficult for people who are not interested in gaming to wrap their heads around the concept, therefore, an opportunity for us to bridge this knowledge gap,” Kibuuka says of the non-gaming community.
The most popular online video games are Battle Royals like Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite and Apex. First-person shooter games like Halo Battlefield and Call of Duty Multiplayer are also popular.
“There is a good number of gamers using consoles and an even bigger number of gamers in our community using PCs because of the good graphics cards that are needed to play some of the current AAA titles like ‘Call of Duty’,” Kibuuka says of the gadgets gamers much prefer.
Such has been the growth that the Arudem Hangout will be launched this year at Fast Sports Fusion within the Design Hub on 5th Street, Industrial Area in Kampala.
Arudem will continue using its administrative office space on Old Port Bell Road in Kampala as its main office location.
Although the digital art industry in Uganda is showing signs of growth and expansion, it is still dogged by a host of challenges. These revolve around lack of skilled labour, finance, data and exposure, clear definition of what this sub-sector is, female gamers, etc. Read More…
