Southeast Asia’s population brew of 620 million brings about the hottest global game revenue growth as it has doubled its total market size from 2014 to $2.2B spell casted for 2017.
Contributing to this affinity are Malaysia and the Philippines, both having a keen understanding and already encouraging throngs of its gamers into proper content creators. To-date, the two have dedicated educational programs for their respective games and animation sectors. At the same time, they also have engaged with a range of emerging flagship studios that feature great leadership, young talents, and long-term digital ambition.
For the longest time, they have continued to raise awareness for this industry with flagship events like LEVEL UP KL for Malaysia and E-Sport & Gaming Summit (ESGS) for the Philippines. In cooperation with the Games Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP), ESGS (Oct. 27-29) is putting together its GameFest event on October 26, 2017, featuring headline industry professionals such as:
Brian Recktenwald – Environment Artist from Naughty Dog, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End & Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Ian Lang – Senior Animator from Blizzard Entertainment
Josh Axner – Technical Artist from Blizzard Entertainment
Ryan Torrey – Senior Animator from House of Moves, Injustice, Mortal Combat X
Jia Shen – VP of Product for Blackstorm Labs, makers of Everwing
Yi Fei Boon – former Lead Programmer of Sparkjumpers, now Field Engineer at Unity
*Jeff Agala – Creative Director of Klei Entertainment, makers of Shank, Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve.
*Tentative
Adding fuel to this ambitious pursuit is the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) partnership with GDAP as both have come together to form a partnership for the first-event cross-promotion process in the region.
Enabling this partnership to bear fruit is Hasnul Hadi Samsudin, VP of Creative Content & Technologies Division at MDEC. He shared: “This MOU shows a commitment from both sides that, as a region, we believe the best way to grow is to do it together. Since 2014, Malaysia, and MDEC, has always pushed for closer collaboration among friends from South East Asia. This signifies the formalisation of a partnership between MDEC and GDAP that, we hope, will benefit both our game development communities in Malaysia and Philippines. This is indeed exciting times for all of us."
Also critical to this promotional partnership is the curators /advisors for GDAP – the famed Art Director of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Naughty Dog LLC, Erick Pangilinan, and Animation Vertigo’s Utah-based CEO Marla Rausch.
“This partnership is not just based on common goals, but on shared paths. We Filipinos have found no better neighbors than Hasnul Samsudin and Dato’ Ng Wan Peng, Chief Operations Officer of MDEC, on this digital road,” added Alvin Juban, President of GDAP.
MDEC and GDAP are keen to pursue three key actions with this partnership: raise capability building through experts influence, talks and workshops; conduct cross-regional events promotion for respective flagship events – GDAP’s GameFest and MDEC’s LEVEL UP KL; and build a stronger Southeast Asian games community via this progressive framework of cooperation.
