SINGAPORE - Singapore has set its sights on South-east Asia’s video gaming market, which is now worth US$5 billion (S$6.9 billion) and is backed by 270 million gamers.
Minister of State for Trade and Industry Alvin Tan made the statement of intent at Gamescom Asia, a regional spin-off of one of the world’s largest gaming trade shows. It is expected to bring together 30,000 gamers and developers at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre between Thursday and Sunday.
The convention, the third edition here, has doubled the number of exhibitors since 2022 to more than 150, filling two show halls – one each for business and gamers. It will showcase, among other titles, the latest games such as Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Spider-Man 2.
The show’s expansion mirrors Singapore’s booming gaming sector, now the fastest-growing field driving the nation’s digital economy, according to a digitalisation report published by the Infocomm Media Development Authority in October.
Gaming grew at compound annual growth rates of 70 per cent annually between 2017 and 2022, ahead of e-commerce and online services.
Mr Tan said in his opening speech on Friday that Singapore can be a hub for the gaming and e-sports markets in Asia, which is home to more than half of the world’s gamers.
Singapore’s video game and e-sports revenues are expected to grow at an annual rate of 14 per cent in 2023 and 10 per cent by 2027, he said, citing figures from Statista.
In a bid to put its name on the map, Singapore partnered with the International Olympic Committee to host the inaugural Olympic E-sports Week in June, with more than 60 nations represented in 10 virtual sports titles, said Mr Tan.
Japanese game developer Capcom also picked Singapore for its Street Fighter 6 tournament, which has drawn hundreds of players to Suntec during Gamescom to compete for a spot in the upcoming world finals.
The growth of the gaming sector is also backed by home-grown game developers, said Mr Tan, adding that the Government aims to support the industry to help businesses stay competitive and individuals build good careers.
Mr Lars Janssen, chairman of the board of the German Games Industry Association, which is backing the convention, said Singapore’s connectivity in the region makes it an ideal host for the trade show, which has attracted a growing number of exhibitors, including gaming’s biggest names.
He told The Straits Times that the games industry is expected to keep growing, although not at the pace it did during the Covid-19 pandemic. But Singapore is likely to remain a step ahead, given its connectedness to the large South-east Asian market and growing gaming infrastructure.
Studios like Genshin Impact makers HoYoverse and Ubisoft have been drawn to Singapore to nest themselves within the Asian market. They also include global games studio LightSpeed Studios, which has partnered national artificial intelligence (AI) programme AI Singapore to develop text-to-speech system for Bahasa Melayu. This will be integrated with a translation engine so that gamers of different cultures can play together.”
While the gaming industry has seen some bumps, such as the departure in 2023 of entertainment studio Lucasfilm and the rocky development of Ubisoft Singapore’s Skull And Bones pirate game, Mr Janssen said Singapore’s situation is not unique, as any industry can be faced with such challenges.
“There are layoffs in the industry sometimes, it’s a typical cycle that we see, but we are positive that we will bounce back and have a strong industry growing forward.”
Mr David Liem, chief executive of local game publisher Ripples Asia Venture, which is among the exhibitors at Gamescom Asia, said that while the market grew during the pandemic, inflation has dampened spending and gamers are becoming more selective in the games they pay for.
As a result, the publisher has turned to games with popular licences like DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which are safer bets instead of more obscure titles.
Mr Liem said: “Users are picky and not as adventurous with unproven games, so we have to go for titles that are more recognisable.”
Others in the market, such as local game development studio Onyx Studio, have turned to overseas markets to expand. Co-founder Tan Wen Hao said the firm started off during the pandemic animating objects for video games, like in-game weapons, but has since branched out into creating game trailers and helping to develop worlds like Cyberpunk 2077.
Correction note: An earlier version of this article described LightSpeed Studios as a US game studio, and that AI Singapore and Lightspeed Studios were co-developing an automatic Malay-to-English translation software for gamers. This has been corrected.
