South Africa's video game development scene has been through a lot of ups and downs since it got started in the mid-90s. The indie scene in particular got its first big break in 2010, with the entry of Desktop Dungeons on the world stage. Events like A MAZE. / Johannesburg have helped the scene grow. The community is still small and lacks diversity, but that is slowly changing.
Ben Myres fell into game development after his father signed him up for a course in game design at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and quickly became deeply involved in the South African indie game development community. He taught game design at WITS University until recently, in addition to holding the Program Director position for A MAZE/Johannesburg and working on Semblance, a puzzle platformer due out later this year.
Myers' position as a lecturer at WITS University was a bit unusual, having been granted to him straight out of college. Myers agrees that it's weird, but also believes it makes sense. "The course I did was the first Game Design course in Africa," he explains, "and we were the pilot class. Because of that, there's not much in the way of lecturers to go around that have both a good theoretical and a good practical background. So the one reason is just, 'there are no lecturers' put together with 'you make games and we know you have the theoretical background because we taught it to you'. "

His practical experience comes largely from game jams. F...