Vietnam’s game industry quietly broke out.

Special correspondent of this newspaper Wang Yiyun Xu

With the development of science and technology and Internet, video games have become a fertile ground for information technology industry, especially in Vietnam, with its rapid growth momentum and attractive income. According to a report by Yuetong News Agency on the 3rd, Vietnam’s game industry has made great progress in the past 10 years. The data shows that the annual revenue of Vietnam’s game industry has exceeded 500 million US dollars, ranking fifth in Southeast Asia.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Communications and Media of Vietnam, many of the most popular mobile games in the world are from Vietnam. More than 50% of the top game studios in Australia-New Zealand-Southeast Asia are from Vietnam. At present, Vietnam ranks second in Southeast Asia in game downloads, and ranks among the top ten in the world in game downloads with an annual growth rate of about 10%. In addition, according to Apple’s estimation, about 180,000 people in Vietnam are developing mobile phone applications, among which the game industry has the largest number of employees.

According to Yuetong News Agency, according to the above data, Microsoft startups and development managers in Vietnam described Vietnam as "a video game power in Southeast Asia".

"The rise of the game industry is not unexpected to Vietnamese. When street vendors compete to sell noodles and iced coffee on the street, technology entrepreneurs are racing against time to promote their products." "Japan Times" previously reported that Vietnam has regarded video games as an important part of its emerging technology industry, greatly surpassing the trend of outsourcing software and sports shoes factories.

The rise of Vietnamese game companies also reflects the country’s success in strengthening the education system. It PISA reported that Vietnamese students often outperform the United States and some OECD countries in the "programme for international student assessment" test. Children’s coding training camps are becoming more and more popular in this country, and universities simply offer courses related to game development.

"Japan Times" said that the vigorous development of video games in Vietnam can be traced back to 10 years ago. In 2013, an independent game developer named Ruan Hadong produced a simple but addictive mobile phone game "Pixel Bird"-players can control the bird’s flight by clicking on the screen to help the bird avoid the pipes of different heights encountered during the flight. According to reports, Pixel Bird became a hit overnight, with 50 million downloads in the Apple Store in less than a year. At the peak of this game, the advertising revenue of one day was about 50,000 dollars. Although the game was later removed due to controversy, it still brought "great shock" to Vietnamese game developers. A person in charge of a Vietnamese game distribution company said that he and his friends spent a sleepless night developing game applications on the rooftop 10 years ago. "This small rooftop is the Vietnamese version of the Silicon Valley garage."

According to Yuetong News Agency, the programming, design, graphics and other tracks in the game industry have created a large number of employment opportunities with high economic value and global competitiveness. This is an opportunity for young workers to choose a career, and it is also a difficult problem for human resources training in the game industry. In this regard, the Ministry of Communications and Media of Vietnam has put forward the goal that the operating income of the country’s game industry will reach 1 billion US dollars in five years. ▲