Game industry can become a pillar of Vietnam’s digital economy

As former industry professionals and now RMIT academics in the field of games and interactivity, Dr Renusha Athugala, Hoang Bao Long and Christian Berg discussed the key to building a thriving game industry in Vietnam.

Understanding what’s lacking in the game industry

The video game industry in Vietnam is currently blooming. In 2020, its total revenue reached VND12,000 billion (around US$530 million, double that of 2015), and this figure is expected to rise to US$1 billion within the next five years.

Five out of ten top companies with the most downloaded games in the ANZSEA region were from Vietnam, according to an App Annie 2021 report. Data also show that Vietnam is a major game hub in South East Asia with many international and local studios employing around 430,000 video game developers in the country.

However, game studios in Vietnam have only designed a humble number of original games that meet international standards. A survey conducted by LacBird Co. (a startup with research in user experience and technological application development) shows that most game studios in Vietnam are running with outsourcing businesses, i.e. art and game programming or cloning (copying games).

This leads to the lack of game designers who have the skill set to create games from scratch. In other words, Vietnam does not have “game designers”, they have “game developers”.

Many Vietnamese games are created by developers who lack creative thinking skills which leads to them being limited in their innovation and creativity, thus the lack of originality. The current focus of Vietnamese game studios – cloning and outsourcing – may help them make instant cash, but this focus does not help the industry stand out in the global market. 

As former industry professionals and now academics, we believe that a large obstacle Vietnamese game developers must overcome is their “production mindset”.

Data from LacBird's interviews with 32 representatives of game studios – from small scale (3-5 people) to mid-scale (25-50 people) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City – show that most designers struggle at the initial idea generation stage. For this reason, they tend to search for the top downloaded/bestselling games on app stores by Google, Apple or Steam. They invest a lot of time and money to copy most of the ideas from these products, sometimes directly cloning them by changing the graphics and sound.

This “production mindset” is a result of the outsourcing businesses which wears down innovation and creativity. If we want the game design industry to stand strong and be part of the global game industry that creates original games, we need to change the “production mindset” to a “creative design mindset”. Here, design refers to creative thinking, ideation, the process of imagining and planning, problem solving, critical thinking and analysis, research and evaluation, art, science, and technology.

Focusing on formal training of game designers

Our view is that Vietnam’s game industry has the potential to become a leading pillar of the digital economy and stand out in the global games market. But to do this, we need to invest in producing well-educated game designers with a creative thinking and problem-solving mindset, as well as the essential ability to adapt to developing technologies and market trends.

Since 2022, RMIT University has been delivering the Bachelor of Design (Games) program in Vietnam. With this program, we aim to create future game designers with the necessary skills such as, brainstorming and ideation, design thinking, critical analysis, problem solving, research, game narratives, level design, system design, art, prototyping, balancing, and playtesting, etc. One of our goals are to educate students to be creative.

We teach, research, and create serious games (e.g. games for education, healthcare, simulation, games for good, visual storytelling) that have a positive impact on the society that we live in. Our view is that games are not only for entertainment purposes. They can also be used to tell a story, share culture and history, learn/educate, or convey a message.

The Games program is a mix of theoretical and technical courses. Research is highly encouraged in every course. We also conduct studio sessions where students are able to think and design in a professional creative working space, while developing teamwork skills. In addition, our students are also taught a mix of development skills to ensure that they can design and develop their own games, which is a means of creating entrepreneurs.

This story was adapted from an article originally published on Vietnamnet.

Story: Dr Renusha Athugala, Hoang Bao Long and Christian Berg – School of Communication & Design, RMIT University Vietnam

Masthead image: MclittleStock – stock.adobe.com