The "Vietnam GameMaker Conference 2023" is taking place within the framework of the Vietnam International Innovation Exhibition, bringing together leading businesses in the industry, international investment funds and game developers to discuss development opportunities for the domestic game industry.
At the event, Mr. Vu Quoc Huy - Director of the National Innovation Center emphasized: "Vietnam's socio-economic development strategy for the period 2021-2030 has identified rapid and sustainable development based on science, technology and innovation. We identify digital transformation and the gaming industry as one of the eight key areas that will help Vietnam make breakthrough developments, contributing to the innovation model".
Mr. Vu Quoc Huy - Director of National Innovation Center
In 2022, the world will have nearly 3.2 billion gamers and the gaming industry's revenue will reach 182.9 billion USD, nearly 7 times higher than the global music industry ($26.2 billion) and double that of the film industry ($77 billion). By the end of 2023, revenue is estimated to reach 187.7 billion USD; of which mobile games account for 50% with 92.6 billion USD (According to Newzoo).
Even in a country with a strong K-pop culture wave like South Korea, the gaming industry's revenue will reach 7.4 billion USD in 2022, 6 times that of the film industry and 46 times that of the music industry.
Interestingly, the MENA-3 region (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt) is also seeing gaming as a huge source of revenue that could replace oil in the future. Gaming revenue in this market reached $1.76 billion in 2022 and is expected to increase by another $1 billion in the next four years, according to Niko Partners. In April this year, Savvy Games, a company owned by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, agreed to acquire the popular US mobile game company Scopely for up to $4.9 billion. This is one of the largest gaming acquisitions in history.
Asia-Pacific is currently the focus of the gaming industry with 85.8 billion USD in revenue and nearly 1.8 billion gamers. "49% of gaming industry investment deals are in Asia, equivalent to 50% of global deal value, and this number is constantly increasing" - Mr. Jin Oh, Representative of BITKRAFT Ventures investment fund commented.
In particular, Southeast Asia, with the advantage of a young, dynamic population, adapting to high technology, reasonable labor costs, and stable internet infrastructure, is having the second highest growth rate of the mobile game industry in the world, forecast to reach 7.4% in the period 2022-2025, compared to the global average of 3%. In Vietnam alone, the revenue of the game industry in 2022 has exceeded 500 million USD, with more than 28,000 employees working in this industry.
Sharing about the economic value chain of the gaming industry, Mr. La Xuan Thang - Director of Online Game Publishing at VNG said that the gaming industry consists of 3 main components: game developers, copyright holders (IP) of game titles; distribution platforms; and publishing businesses. According to him, the 3 important components mentioned above complement and support each other to develop together in a complete ecosystem. "Vietnamese gaming businesses should focus on Group 1 (developing products and moving towards building their own IPs) and Group 3 (releasing products, step by step from Vietnam to Southeast Asia and then globally, based on deep creativity and localization). Group 2 is a relatively difficult part because it is a game of global platform technologies and finance - Mr. Thang added.
Mr. La Xuan Thang - Director of Online Game Publishing, VNG
However, in reality, although the Vietnamese gaming industry has a number of fast-growing gaming companies, the entire industry still has many limitations. Vietnam has not yet formed a real gaming ecosystem, companies have not yet taken advantage of cooperation with each other, good technology engineers making games still lack experience, and have not yet reached a large number of users. "If we evaluate product quality based on many criteria, we are still far behind the world's leading group" - Mr. Vu Quoc Huy commented.
Sharing the same view with Mr. Vu Quoc Huy, Mr. La Xuan Thang shared: "In my opinion, synchronous financial support policies, incentives, systematic education and training programs... are not enough, the game industry needs recognition from the Management Agency and society to truly develop its full potential". He also gave an example that currently in Vietnam there is no university training code for the game industry, only a few schools have this major such as British University BUV, RMIT University, the rest are short-term courses. In fact, the human resources for the game industry today are often from "closely related industries" such as IT, graphic design,... Meanwhile, in the top 100 university training programs for the game industry in the world, Europe - America accounts for over 60%.
"In order for the Vietnamese gaming industry to truly become a high-value and competitive industry, creating many jobs with great economic value, we need to build a team of internationally qualified human resources and a diverse, united and mutually supportive ecosystem," Mr. Vu Quoc Huy concluded.
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