Brian Diang’a was looking to improve his gaming skills by watching YouTube videos when he stumbled on an online competition where the prize money was $1,000.
He had been playing Mortal Kombat and had developed an online persona that matched how well he fought and had acquired the nickname The Beast. He also happens to be burly so the name was a good fit.
He remembers one gamer he first saw on YouTube.
“So, me being an M K (Mortal Kombat) guy I was like, ‘This guy plays this game like me. How, why should I not do that?’ And that’s how I started and joined e-sports,” he recalls.
He quickly realized there was more to gaming than he had anticipated and that he could actually make a career out of it. He understood that tournaments would open up the e-sports world for him, so he gave himself to learning and honing his skills.
That was 2012, the year he became a professional gamer and now that he has been in it for almost half of his life, both locally and internationally, Brian understands the industry’s opportunities and challenges.
Playing against other professional gamers means you need good internet and while Kenya has some of the fastest internet on the continent, sometimes the connection is not good enough for the demands of e-sports.
“Sometimes you want to play with guys on the internet, yet the connection is so bad that you can’t enjoy the game and imagine it’s local,” he says.
When playing internationally, he says, a slower connection than your opponent is also a disadvantage.
The Beast has grown into a role model for the youth and has been part of Blaze, Safaricom’s youth network.
He was thus a natural choice for the testing of Safaricom 5G ahead of its launch late November in Nairobi.
“The gaming response was immediate. The latency was so fast you couldn’t tell if you were looking at the other console or the next screen. You wouldn’t tell the difference between an X-Box or a PlayStation 5. They work so seamlessly and fast,” he said.
In gaming, one of the most important factors is the ping – the measure of time it takes for data to good move from your console to the server and back down to the screen. The higher the ping, the slower the game, the lower the ping the faster the game. Gamers naturally want it as low as possible.
Related: 5G Safaricom Internet for Business
In Africa, says Brian, the lowest ping you can get is 64, and that’s in Kenya.
“5G brings about speed, solving that latency issue where you get high pings. At least it will take it down a bit and help with the fact that you don’t have gaming servers in Africa. So, I feel it will give us a bit more edge in online competitions, even just gaming locally,” Brian says.
Beyond just gaming, 5G opens up new opportunities for e-sports athletes and content creators in the country.
Brian spoke to the Safaricom Newsroom about what 5G can do for gaming to evolve into an income-generating and job-creating ecosystem.
Watch the video below to hear more from The Beast.
