As of the end of 2023, the revenue of the global gaming industry is estimated to reach $187.7 billion, according to Newzoo, of which mobile games will account for a large proportion with expected revenue of $92.6 billion. The big size of the gaming industry has caught the attention of many countries.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where the economies rely on oil, the revenue from games has surged from $680 million in 2015 to $4 billion in 2022. Therefore, in the eyes of the economies in the Gulf, the gaming industry has become a source of huge profits, big enough to replace the revenue from oil.

In UAE, special economic zones have been set up reserved for game developers. Special incentives are offered in the zones to create an ideal legal environment for games which can be exported to the world. 

Arab Saudi Arabia has also injected money into the gaming industry. Savvy Games, owned by the national public investment fund, has announced the purchase of Scopely, a game firm headquartered in the US, at $4.9 billion.

Not only enjoying high priority in economic development, game production is also believed a method to increase the soft power of some countries. Arab countries hope the gaming industry will help them propagate local culture to people all over the world.

MIC and Game Hub

Newzoo’s report also showed that Latin America, the Middle East, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia are witnessing rapid high mobile game market growth rates in 2022. Of these, the Southeast Asian market is worth $4.5 billion, just after two Latin American countries. 

As for Vietnam, there had been 28,000 workers working in the gaming industry as of the end of 2022. Statista reported that the workforce brought huge revenue of $507 million in 2022.

With Flappy Bird, the game invented by Nguyen Ha Dong, Axie Infinity by Nguyen Thanh Trung and Sky Mavis, which are well known all over the world, Vietnam is believed to have great potential to develop a strong gaming industry. However, Vietnam’s game studios are developing without a plan.

Gaming is one of the innovative industries that Vietnam can compete globally, which is why the representative of MIC’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (ABEI) at the 2023 national forum on gaming industry development raised an idea about the launch of ‘Game Hub’ to develop Vietnam’s gaming industry.

At the forum, La Xuan Thang, VNG’s mobile game distribution director, said Vietnam will benefit from the strong development of the gaming industry in the region.

“The revenue from the gaming industry exceeded the $500 million threshold in 2022. If counting in domestic consumption value and other sources of revenue, the figure would be $1 billion,” Thang said.

He went on to say that gaming has been and will be an important business field on the internet. This is a creative industry which is the combination of content and technology, thus bringing relaxation to gamers. 

According to ABEI’s director Le Quang Tu Do, gaming is a business field with great potentials, but the industry has been fragmented because of the lack of links between domestic game producers and distributors.

“Domestic producers do outsource for foreign partners, while Vietnam’s game distributors have to buy foreign games to distribute domestically,” Do noted.

Vu Quoc Huy, director of the National Innovation Center (NIC), agreed that Vietnam’s gaming industry development cannot grow well because of the lack of a game ecosystem.

“Companies don’t go together, so they cannot exploit each other’s advantages. Good engineers can create excellent games, but they lack experience to distribute the games. Meanwhile, experienced distributors cannot find high-quality games to distribute,” he explained.

To develop gaming into an industry which is valuable and competitive in the world market, and create high-quality jobs, Vietnam needs to build up a high-quality workforce with a diverse ecosystem which comprises many game firms which cooperate and support each other.

‘Game Hub’ is created to connect three relations, including the ones between small game startups with large firms to support each other, between game producers and game distributors, and between Vietnamese enterprises with foreign investors and investment funds to obtain more capital and high technology.

Trong Dat