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Vietnam

After Flappy Bird, Vietnam Gaming Takes Off

After Flappy Bird, Vietnam Gaming Takes Off
Lien Hoang

If you played a game on your smartphone in February, there’s a good chance it was Flappy Bird, a Vietnamese mobile app that took the gaming world by storm.

According to Mary-Anne Lee for Games in Asia in Singapore, even professional gamers in Singapore couldn’t help but take notice.

“The internet just blew up with news of Flappy Bird. It was ridiculously difficult and ridiculously addictive. I think what Flappy Bird has done for the country is given it the courage to realize, hey, we may not be Japan or Korea, but we do have the ability to produce something as groundbreaking as Flappy Bird. And I think after this, it’s very possible for a lot more companies to follow.”

Flappy Bird brought Vietnam some global fame but Ngo Luyen, who founded DivMob to develop apps, says the gaming industry here was under way long before then.

“In the past year, the mobile phone market in general and the gaming apps market in particular have developed really quickly. A year ago, there was a huge gap between the quality of products here and Japanese products. But the quality has changed rapidly — it’s constantly getting better.”

Vietnam has many ingredients for a potential gaming industry: a young population; wide internet penetration; and more phone subscriptions than there are people.

Ngo Luyen explains that gaming also attracts Vietnamese because it’s not expensive. “The cost to develop a mobile game is really, very low, compared with the cost to develop a computer or online game. For PC games, a group of three or four people would really struggle to make a good product. But with mobile games, the same group could create a product of international quality.”

The low barrier to entry is what allows independent developers like Nguyen Tan Loc to experiment with new ideas for game apps.

“The greatest feeling comes not when we finish the app, but while we’re developing it. For example, we finish a design, but then we get another idea, and we change the design around and try it out. And if it works, it’s really exciting. What’s really special is, if we give our game to other people to play and they like it, we’re really happy.”

The government is investing in the technology sector, too. It has laid out a roadmap to make Vietnam a technology hub by 2020, according to Tech in Asia writer Le Dang Hieu.

“The way it affects the gaming industry is, they are supporting IT and there are also a lot of programs for educational purposes. And you can see that there are a lot of games training courses, and institutions are starting to pay attention to the game industry.

The world is paying attention to Vietnam’s gaming industry, too — and wondering if there could be another hit like Flappy Bird in Vietnam’s future.

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Economy

Globalization Takes A New Turn, Away From China

China is still a manufacturing juggernaut and a growing power, but companies are looking for alternatives as Chinese labor costs continue to rise — as do geopolitical tensions with Beijing.

Photo of a woman working at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

A woman works at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — What were the representatives of dozens of large American companies doing in Vietnam these past few days?

A few days earlier, a delegation of foreign company chiefs currently based in China were being welcomed by business and government leaders in Mexico.

Then there was Foxconn, Apple's Taiwanese subcontractor, which signed an investment deal in the Indian state of Telangana, enabling the creation of 100,000 jobs. You read that right: 100,000 jobs.

What these three examples have in common is the frantic search for production sites — other than China!

For the past quarter century, China has borne the crown of the "world's factory," manufacturing the parts and products that the rest of the planet needs. Billionaire Jack Ma's Alibaba.com platform is based on this principle: if you are a manufacturer and you are looking for cheap ball bearings, or if you are looking for the cheapest way to produce socks or computers, Alibaba will provide you with a solution among the jungle of factories in Shenzhen or Dongguan, in southern China.

All of this is still not over, but the ebb is well underway.

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