MWEB GameZone: world domination is on the cards

MWEB plans to keep hold of its strong position in the GSP market

James Etherington-SmithJuly 31, 2012

Internet service provider (ISP) MWEB plans to continue prioritising gaming traffic on its network, and supporting the competitive gaming scene in South Africa.

For South Africa’s Gamers, a large chunk of their online gaming activity is made possible by local gaming service providers. Often run by the ISPs themselves, these freely-available public game servers are the scene of countless digital skirmishes.

There are numerous advantages for gamers and gaming service providers (GSPs) alike. Gamers will experience their favourite titles with other South Africans, and will benefit from latency far lower than gaming internationally. GSPs get a warm fuzzy feeling from supporting South African gamers, it works as a neat brand-awareness marketing trick, and it keeps traffic on their network.

We contacted SA’s largest GSPs to find out which titles are the most popular, if they have seen growth in the gaming market in 2012, and what their plans are for the future.

MWEB GameZone’s Brad Kirby said that Battlefield 3, Team Fortress 2, and Arma 2 – Day Z mod are the most popular titles on their service currently.

“We have seen a 35% growth over the last year,” said Kirby.

Speaking to plans for the future, Kirby said jokingly “I love my job and will probably get fired if I reveal all of our plans for world domination.”

“Most of our future plans that I am allowed to talk about are around ensuring that MWEB remains the ISP of choice for gamers by prioritising gaming traffic on our network, growing the community of online gamers locally, and improving the standard of competitive gaming across PC and console platforms in South Africa.”

We asked the same questions of Robert Hart from SAIX Gaming, to which he responded: “Unfortunately SGS don’t keep those stats. They just do it for the fun of the game.”

Web Africa, iGame Online, and IS Gaming didn’t reply by the time of publication.

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Tags: ARMA 2, Battlefield 3, Brad Kirby, Day Z, GameZone, headline, Mweb, MWEB GameZone