Gaming
Gaming
A tale of a gamer in Nigeria
Meet the King of Clash Royale
Nigeria is home to over 200 million people, placing it as the seventh-largest country in the world. However, what is not widely known is the big but unorganised e-sports community. The Nigerian e-sports industry faces challenges, including limited access to resources, support, a lack of well-established professional e-sports competition, and the negative public perception surrounding gamers. In the Nigerian context, gamers are seen as “woh woh”, which is pidgin slang for “useless people.” This stereotype typically discourages most gamers from boasting of their skills publicly. The peculiar challenges in the e-sport scene in Nigeria have also made foreign investment difficult.
Red Bull Gaming delved into the scene with the Clash Royale mobile game launching under Red Bull M.E.O in the country. King-Paul Isikalu, a 19-year-old male, emerged the winner of the competition. KP Jones, as Paul is popularly called, is known for his admirable gaming skills and one of the young prospects in the mobile e-sports. At the age of 15, he decided that his choice of career was to be a professional gamer in the e-sports industry. Shortly after, his love for Clash Royale sprout up, and he consistently improved his skills in the game.
Nigeria Red Bull M.E.O Season 2 Winner - KP Jones.jpg
© Miracle Bitrus
Red Bull MEO Nigeria.jpg
© Miracle Bitrus
Red Bull MEO Nigeria.JPG
© Miracle Bitrus
To further his career in the mobile e-sports gaming scene, he entered the Clash Royale Tournament in the year xxxx finishing with a 20-win badge, ranking amongst the top 20 in Nigeria. KP Jones today has over 6,300 trophies to his name. Success was looming in the air until everything became blurry because of the lack of support to progress or even participate at previous Clash Royale world finals abroad. The zeal to keep playing went sour as he felt the Nigerian environment would never accept him being a gamer, coupled with the fact that his mom, according to him, like every other African mother would always shout “everytime, Game! Game!! Game!!!”. By implication, he went into ‘retirement’ for over two years, and began to pursue a career as a Computer Scientist.
Trying to settle into the Computer Science world, a friend of his shared with him information about the Red Bull M.E.O Clash Royale Nigerian qualifiers he had seen online. “Paul, it is time to come out of retirement ooo”- his friend said. With minimal enthusiasm, he decided to enter into the competition.
Finally, the matchday came. KP Jones started the weekend off in a bracket of 32 competitors and had no record of a single loss from any of the matches he played - he won!
Red Bull M.E.O ignited the fire in me to start playing Clash Royale again, and the experience was just great because I have never gone abroad, it was like a movie knowing that each time I won, I was a step closer to Spain, my brothers were sitting with me and watching me play and shouting when I won each round. It was crazy!
Although the final match between him and his opponent was full of tension, Paul came out victorious. “I am happy that I have this experience and I am going to Spain to represent Nigeria, not just with the mindset to win, but to also put Nigeria on the world map and Africa as a whole, because even a particular guy that finished top 1000 in the world, did not even get recognized; so Red Bull is the first to create such an experience of putting we Nigerian mobile e-sports players on the world map”- Paul added.
