This is a re-created version of a talk given at the University of Utah at the Frontiers of New Media Symposium on 09/19/2009. The talk was created using the Löve 2D game engine, the Planet Cute tiles created by Dank of Lost Garden, and some Lua code written by me.
The talk was titled, "Managing the Wild Wild East: Controlling the Frontiers of the Global Videogame Industry"
Absract: More than most new media industries, the videogame industry fiercely guards its borders, colonies, and frontiers. While India has developed a significant mobile game development industry, it operates primarily as an off-shoring site for American and Western European countries. Korea has developed a significant internal game industry, which generates massive numbers of games and content for home markets. China is slowly developing a market similar to Korea and Vietnam follows a model similar to India. What structures, practices, and histories have presided over this emerging structure? What prevents the frontiers from making inroads into the mainstream? This talk examines the current state of the game industry in these four locations and uses India as an exemplary index to help understand these overarching questions.