MANILA, Philippines — The game development industry in the Philippines has seen remarkable growth over the past few years. According to the head of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP), the industry has expanded significantly, with membership growing steadily.
"Three years ago, we were at 40 to 50 members and then after three years, we hit over 100. Now, 30% of that is typically at the academic level. The rest are all studios. It's a mix in terms of types. Predominantly, they're all typically outsourcing companies, game development companies. We’re definitely growing the industry," said GDAP president James Lo.
The growth is attributed to GDAP’s efforts to venture out of Metro Manila, open regional offices in Bicol and Cebu, and discover new game developers and new talents.
Despite the growth in the industry, challenges remain. For GDAP vice president and committee head of membership Solon Chen, two problems persist: the acquisition of talent and funding.
"Number one is definitely the talents, the qualified talents. The degree for game development was promulgated in 2014 and different schools that offer game development have stepped up their curriculum since then. And we’re slowly seeing an amazing talent poo. But the most challenging thing people encounter when making games is that they are expensive to make, and securing funding has always been the biggest challenge,” shared Chen.
Though the problem persists, Lo and Chen notes the different collaborations. These include the government in helping build up the game development industry with the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) having a program funding independent game development and providing materials for developers research; as well as agencies like Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) helping GDAP and game developers attend international conferences to bring exposure and build networks across different countries, which has been seen heavily with the Philippine Game Dev Expo (PGDX); as well as Filipino participation in international shows such as the Taipei Game Show and the Tokyo Game Show.
"The number of international studios to actually look at the Philippines as a market to bring their games out and distribute here is great,” shared Lo.
Looking ahead, GDAP aims to empower independent gaming studios to create and market their games globally.
"We want to increase our releases in terms of independent games,” said Lo, noting how most of the industry strives of being outsourced for companies abroad and how GDAP hopes to shift that trend into Filipinos developing their own games.
As Lo and Chen put it, most of the developers in the country only know how to create but do not have the knowledge on the other side of game development which is the marketing side.
“Our Filipino game developers are in this industry because they love making games and they are trained to make games. That's what they studied for, but not a lot of them are educated or trained enough in the business aspect of game development. So they need to learn more about it and this is one of our projects [for the coming year],” added Lo.