A decade after ‘Flappy Bird’, Vietnam becomes gaming powerhouse

Not long ago, Vietnam’s government warned parents that too many videogames could lead children to a life of crime – even murder.

But when the first-ever Vietnam GameVerse Day was held in Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year, government officials were front and centre promoting the country as the region’s hottest market for entertainment apps development.

Hanoi now views mobile games as an export asset and a crucial part of its emerging technology sector, as it seeks to shift beyond being a centre for outsourced software and sneaker factories.

The change is also an acknowledgment of the industry’s economic potential: the global mobile gaming market is estimated to exceed US$300bil next year, with an annual growth rate of over 7% in coming years.

The country ranked among the world’s top five in mobile game production by downloads in the first half of 2023.

The local gaming industry is led by a growing cadre of game developers and publishing startups including Amanotes, known for its mobile music games, and Falcon Squad publisher OneSoft.

Vietnam first caught the attention of global gamers in 2013 after Hanoi developer Dong Nguyen created a simple but addictive game app called Flappy Bird that became a sensation. It was so popular that Dong, reportedly disconcerted by the sudden attention, took it down – but not before earning as much as US$50,000 a day from pop-up advertisements.

Flappy Bird provided a jolt to Vietnamese developers, who saw how successful such simple mobile games, widely known as casual games, could be.

Thai Thanh Liem, chief executive officer of game publisher Topebox and part of the new generation of successful gaming entrepreneurs, recalls the excitement of those early days a decade ago.

He and his friends, who would later become co-founders of the company, worked tirelessly on free-to-play gaming apps that would later be downloaded on smartphones from Singapore to San Francisco.

Their first game, within a year, achieved half a million downloads and US$1mil in global revenue. Bigger hits followed. Sky Dancer, a parkour-style game in which users bounce off cliffs and floating islands, is published in China by TikTok Inc’s parent company ByteDance Ltd, and has been downloaded at least 50 million times.

Game studios now dot the country, competing to create the next global blockbuster.

Amanotes’ Magic Tiles 3 ranked among the 20 top mobile games in global downloads last year, according to Sensor Tower Inc, which provides market research on mobile apps and digital advertising. Amanotes says the game has been downloaded more than one billion times since its release in 2017. — Bloomberg