WebAfrica has been one of the most innovative ISP’s in terms of its approach to gaming with its Freezone which allows gamers to play on the WAGE servers and access its Steam Mirror servers without using bandwidth.
We recently caught up with WebAfrica’s product and marketing executive Cliff Hazell, who was able to give us some insight into how the ISP’s push into the gaming market has been received by gamers.
One of the interesting points to come out of the interview was that PC gaming seems to be the biggest contributor to online gaming in SA, a sentiment echoed by OpenWeb.
How has the response to WAGE been over the past year?
WAGE has taken off phenomenally, offering a variety of different games and associated services. While growth has slowed slightly this last year, partly due to the financial climate, we are excited and looking forward to what the coming year holds. We are an EA-affiliated Ranked Server Provider as well as offering two Steam content servers.
What is the current status of Web Africa’s Steam mirror?
Both servers are up and performing very well, they are often top of the usage list.
Is all of the Steam content replicated on the Wage Steam servers?
Currently we only offer English content, primarily due to the massive size of the mirror, a complete mirror would require in excess of 14TB of storage.
The process of pushing new releases (Valve push content to us, instead of us pulling it from them) to the content mirrors is also staggered, with the highest volume areas typically receiving content first. Unfortunately South Africa therefore often receives content up to a few days behind the US and EU.
Does Webafrica have any gamer centric DSL packages planned?
The Home Pro add-on we launched in November is targeted specifically at online gamers. For the full details see our blog. We also found that quite a lot of gamers are using our Download Plus product to schedule downloads and updates.
Does Webafrica see gamers as an important audience, or is this still quite a niche market?
This is exactly why we launched WAGE, we know that gamers have different needs, whether it’s access to the latest games and servers or better quality bandwidth.
Gaming has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years, and we see that trend continuing.
Can you give us any idea of how much gaming related traffic activity occurs on your network?
Directly accountable gaming only accounts for around 1% of our network volume, this excludes updates and downloads for installations, which are more difficult to specifically track.
However, while traffic volumes are fairly low, quality here is essential and we are known for providing the most reliably stable gaming performance.
Which gaming platform do you think plays online the most in SA?
I’d say PC is still ahead in hours played online at the moment, but as connectivity becomes more affordable and through the local launch of services likeXbox Live, we might see that changing.
Does Webafrica have anything interesting planned for gamers in the next few months?
We want to start our own gaming league as well as bringing more online gameplay to the South African market. We’ll also be offering servers for games such as Bad Company 2, and Crysis 2, with more to come in the near future.
We’re planning a number of new things with WAGE for the coming year and will keep you in the loop as we progress.
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