Interview with Spencer Ma of Carry1st

Ever since it launched in late 2019, Call of Duty: Mobile became an instant success that has amassed more than 650 million downloads with last year's monthly number of active players on mobile almost matching that of console and PC. 

Carry1st, Africa's leading publisher of social and interactive content has partnered with Activision and multi-award-winning singer Nancy C to celebrate South Africa's new dedicated Call of Duty: Mobile server with a campaign to further grow the game in the country.

We spoke with Spencer Ma, Senior Growth Manager at Carry1st to learn more about the campaign's success as well as what could be the start of triple-A investments in Africa.

The Naija Nerds: For audiences who may not have played or heard of some of its published games, Can you describe Carry1st to us?

Spencer Ma: “Carry1st is a multifaceted organization that works with a couple of different departments, our main mandate as a company is to publish mobile games across Africa. We have a suite of mobile games across a wide variety of categories whether it's puzzle or causal, we have so many other games in the works as well. So we partner with game developers to bring their games to market, particularly serving the mobile games market in Africa. 

“Aside from that we also do marketing with triple-A gaming studios as well as other game companies to be able to launch and scale games in African markets. The one that I'm working on currently is working with Activision to launch and scale Call of Duty: Mobile within the South African market. Basically to prove a point for Activision as well as large triple-A gaming studios that the mobile gaming market in Africa is booming. And there's a lot of gamers in Africa that would like to have the attention from a triple-A gaming studio such as Activision."

Aside from the fact that Activision finally implemented a local Call of Duty: Mobile server in South Africa, what inspired the partnership with Activation for the CODM campaign?

“For Carry1st we've always recognised the potential for mobile gaming in Africa and we wanted to be able to prove that by partnering with a triple-A gaming studio such as Activision. For Activision, it was a bit harder for them to understand the kind of reach and the potential for this particular market tip but I think what inspired them was just understanding that currently there are already a million or so installs for Call of Duty: Mobile within South Africa alone. 

“They've already had a large presence and a lot of people already play the game, but without dedicated servers. So for us, it was just a matter of proving out the point that there are gamers in South Africa particularly that play Call of Duty: Mobile and are very passionate about it, and that inspired the partnership with them. Because some of their other growth areas within kind of the global market are stagnating, they're looking to other growth markets around the world and Africa to them was particularly interesting, not something that they originally thought about until we had to approach them. But it's something that they have found very rewarding in terms of the campaign so far."

Carry1st also partnered with African Cyber Gaming League (ACGL), one of the leading esports companies in Africa that specialize in online and LAN tournaments.

“We work hand in hand with them on this campaign, they've been our go-to partner for anything that revolves in the gaming aspects. Whether it's organizing tournaments or facilitating live play. We utilized ACGL at Comic Con Africa when we had people come and actually play Call of Duty: Mobile on their devices and they facilitated an eight-person free-for-all tournament that ran very smoothly. 

“So since this campaign started they have become a go-to partners for that aspect and have just become, you know, our partners in crime for this campaign overall. The working relationship is incredible between us and ACGL, we definitely plan to utilize them for the rest of this campaign as well as for other events but for anything esports-related, especially as we are also trying to buy into their mission of growing eSports in Africa, we're going to be using ACGL as our partners for a very long time."

You've been leading the campaign ever since it commenced. What has the success been like so far?

“The campaign's success has already been incredible. It's been very high, and the campaign has only been going on for less than a month but overall, the campaign success is very high. From our standpoint we've seen a lot of organic growth in installs for Call of Duty: Mobile, so a lot more people are finding out about the game and a lot more people have downloaded the game. Nancy C is very involved and loves to play Call of Duty: Mobile as well.

“I think for the first time these African gamers are actually feeling that they're being paid attention to by Activision, in terms of the dedicated servers as well, hip hop stars such as Nancy C. So Call of Duty itself as a franchise is very popular in Africa but now the attention is being placed in the game itself. So what we're doing now and hopefully within the rest of the campaign is focusing on building up the CODM community in South Africa. There are a lot of pro teams and pro players here that don't really get recognised and we're trying to shine a light on those players who dedicate a lot of their lives to playing this game."

By starting AAA investments in Africa does this mean we’ll be seeing more partnerships between Carry1st and other video game companies? Or similar events in other African countries? 

“That's definitely the intention and the goal. For us to be able to continue something like the partnership that we have with Activision with other video game companies and also expand to the entire continent. Definitely something that we're working towards."

“We've been doing this campaign for about a month, so we're going to be focusing on it first. I think hopefully working with Activision to start expanding their efforts to the rest of the African continent outside of South Africa. That's something we're hoping towards, so potentially, you know, Nigeria could be next if all things go as well for this campaign, but right now nothing is confirmed. We are mostly focused on this campaign and doing a good here."

As Africa’s most populated country, are there plans on boosting the mobile game scene in Nigeria? 

“Carry1st has a lot of Nigerian roots across a lot of different tenets. So for example the Carry1st shop, where the Nigerian market is the largest. So we're enabling a lot of Nigerian gamers to be able to purchase real-world items as well as gaming vouchers through our shop and that's been really successful so far. 

“We've also hosted a number of tournaments in Nigeria as well. We hosted a FIFA tournament within Lagos which was incredibly fun-filling and attracted a lot of local Nigerian gamers as well. So a lot of it is actually rooted within our company in terms of its Nigerian roots. I mean, we have a dedicated team in Nigeria out in Lagos that helps us plan events and expand the presence of Carry1st as well as its games and platform within the country. 

“Actually our name ‘Carry1st', comes from a Nigerian saying, so it's rooted within our company culture to be mostly Nigerian. And we're starting up a campus programme called tribe, what this means is we're basically onboarding campus ambassadors at universities mostly within Nigeria currently to become kind of tribe campus ambassadors and help us grow the gaming community, throughout the country and the African continent. And that's currently mostly been concentrated within Nigeria itself, so we have a lot of activities that we're doing in Nigeria and things that we want to do to promote the gaming scene within Nigeria as well."

How might this develop in future? Do you plan on expanding the campaign by tapping into console and PC markets? 

“I think for right now we want to stay mobile-first, obviously don't know in terms of what the long-term future might hold but I think given that the market in Africa like 97% of gamers are mobile-first, we want to be able to stay in line with that market as well as serve mobile games market just in terms of how it relates to the demographics to the market that we serve. So I think we'd like to stay mobile at first, I think we found that mobile-first resonates very well with us in this market. 

“Obviously we know that there's a good portion of people that have console and PC, but for the vast majority of African gamers play on their phones, and we want to be able to cater to that market because I think overall, in terms of the global gaming scene, mobile gaming is seen as kind of “inferior" for lack of a better term to console and PC gaming but we really want to remove that stigma and to be able to say that mobile games are actually very high quality, they're very good, and also very convenient to be able to play with your friends. So we want to be able to show that mobile gaming is, in fact, a very viable place to play very high-quality games such as Call of Duty: Mobile. So for right now, I think our vision is mostly set within mobile gaming versus console and PC gaming."