Organizing this event for my Global Video Games course this semester.
Category: Asian studies
Will be presenting this topic at PSN Indonesia Conference 2023 in the coming weeks. My idea is still not fully formed yet, but what the hey.
Register here if you want to attend the conference (Note: it’s an in-person conference and the language is Indonesian)
This video is from a podcast interview that I did for The Conversation Indonesia podcast show, SuarAkademia, in 2021. I was invited by Luthfi Dzulfikar, the producer of the podcast program, to discuss about the discourse of “fatwa haram” on video games like PUBG in Indonesia, which I personally think is ridiculous and historically clueless.
I gave my two cents about the long history of moral panic about video games, which usually revolves around the rising popularity of a new genre, or a new mechanic system (e.g. battle royale), and also briefly touched upon my current research on the early history of Indonesian video games culture. You can watch the full interview (in Indonesian) below, or listen to it here.
This post is about contemporary game culture and industry in Indonesia rather than its early history.
Last weekend, I went to Game Prime 2019. It’s the biggest annual game exhibition in Indonesia which gathers both major and indie game studios in the country. The event is mainly sponsored by the Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf), government-funded agency that supports the development of creative economy in the country. This is actually my first time attending Game Prime even though the event itself has been held for three years now.
In general, it was a good experience. I learned how rapidly the game industry in Indonesia has evolved in the last ten years. I still remember when I was first researching Nusantara Online game back in 2011, the industry was still sporadic. Now, not only are there many game studios flourishing all over the country, some of them have actually marketed their game internationally, such as Agate Studio with its premium game, Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story, or Digital Happiness’s DreadOut.
I also observed that a significant number of game studios in Indonesia have developed games in B2B (Business to Business) model, meaning they do not publish their games to the public, only for exhibition or their client’s events/programs. For instance, Agate Studio, perhaps the biggest studio that participates in the event given the number of their booths (they had 4 separate booths), made two games (Smart Bike and City Defender) for AXA Indonesia and one for Telkom (Sky Cage). I believe this strategy is pretty common among Indonesian developers since they need to keep their business sustainable.
On the other hand, I also saw (and played) several games made as side projects or prototypes by a small collective of developers or a single individual. I actually find some of these projects much more interesting than games made with B2B model. Because, instead of operating as gimmicky spectacle with little inventiveness in gameplay or narrative development, some of these alpha or beta versions displayed more creative excitement. For instance, I was interested in the game Kirana, an action RPG game developed by Kawarna Studio as a side project. The game uses the history of Singosari during the Mongol invasion as its background narrative and has a female protagonist. There is also Loveless–developed by only one person under the name of Teamless–which is a study of player agency in the form hybrid and non-linear dating sims/adventure game. The game’s visual actually reminded me of Undertale.
Of course there’s a sobering realization in me that many of these alpha or beta version games perhaps will never see the light of day given the developers’ limited resources and market demand. But, it’s still stimulating to see how these studios exhibited their passion project.
Another thing that I observed from the event is how Indonesian mainstream video game industry has started to think forward about platform and game ecosystem. In this case, Telkom Indonesia—the nation’s largest telecommunication service provider—is perhaps the main support engine for this development. The company has supported Gameqoo, a Stadia-like cloud gaming service, offering subscription-based gaming option for Indonesians. According to one of Gameqoo’s staff that I talked to, the company is also planning to bundle its service with Telkom’s Indihome cable and internet services in the near future. In addition to this, Telkom has also partnered with Agate Studio to create an ecosystem for local games called Oolean, which eventually will also be connected to Gameqoo. It looks like the semi state-owned company is now really serious in supporting domestic game industry, which is a good thing considering its half-hearted backing in the past.
At the indie level, a small game developer, Ginvo Studio, is also hoping to create a sustainable ecosystem for their games, which mainly consist of tabloid newsgames about all things viral in Indonesian internetscape. They actually have quite an ambitious plan to develop and sustain their platform by planning to release one newsgame every week, and I am actually interested in this studio and their games for my research. I will probably contact them in the near future.
I also noticed that some companies also utilize real digital currency reward system to attract gamers to use their platform, such as India-based Mobile Premiere League and Amcore’s game Jump,Bunn. I think this is related to the aggressive strategy of Indonesia’s digital wallet services that I wrote in my previous post and the rapid popularity of competitive gaming/e-sports.
In terms of genre, survival horror game seems to be on the rise besides RPG. I believe this happens because of international achievement of DreadOut. Many studios aspire to achieve the same level of success, if not more, with their games. For instance, Storytale Studios has Pamali and Ozysoft has Pulang: Insanity. Personally, I am interested in the development of 4Happy Studio’s game WhoIsHe: Let Me Out. It has the vibe of What Remains of Edith Finch, which I really like, and a touch of Indonesian culture. It’s also developed by a studio not from the island of Java (4Happy Studio is from Batam island), which is refreshing. I hope the studio will complete the game in the near future.
Game Prime also had a section for old arcade games, which brought back nostalgic memories in me (especially of Galaga and Street Fighter!).
It also has a separate section for tabletop/board games. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to visit each booth and talk with the game developers/creators, but I bought two board games, Circus Politicus and Bluffing Billionaires, that I plan on using in my Global Video Game Cultures seminar this fall.
All in all, I am glad that I went to the event and I hope I will get a chance to go to the next one.
This post is a follow up from my last post about the digital humanities workshop I organized for AAS 2017. Well, I ended up not attending the workshop itself because of my visa situation (what a bummer!). But, the workshop itself went pretty well (thankfully!). The University of Rochester’s Re-Envisioning Japan (REJ) team (Joanne Bernardi, Nora Dimmock, and Tracy Stuber) and the Lafayette College’s East Asia Image Collection team (Paul Barclay) successfully facilitated the workshop.
The workshop itself comprised four activities:
- Introduction of the two projects
- Hands-on activities: Object Encounters, Twenty Questions with an Object, and Metadata and Tagging
- Concluding comments (recapping projects)
- Q & A
Here are some of the photos from the workshop (courtesy of Nora Dimmock):
And here is the link to the REJ team’s powerpoint presentation.
This coming March, I will be organizing a collaborative digital humanities workshop: Archives in Between-Digital Humanities and Material Culture in East Asian Studies, at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Chicago .
This workshop is part of an on-going collaboration that my CLIR fellow cohort, Michaela Kelly, and I are initiating.
It will feature two large-scale, on-going digital humanities projects at the University of Rochester and Lafayette College: Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture and the East Asia Image Collection. Both are faculty-library collaborations offering innovative pathways for East Asian Studies scholarship, research, and teaching.
So, if you are planning to be at the conference, do come to our workshop session!
Here’s the link to the workshop flier that contains more info, including the location and time: link
A short commentary on “fatwa haram” for PUBG in Indonesia
By zhoel13
On August 15, 2019
In article, Asian studies, Commentary, digital cultures, Indonesia, indonesian digital culture, video games, youth culture
“PUBG – PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds”by timz2011 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
In the midst of returning to the States, I wrote a short commentary for The Conversation about a religious edict (fatwa) stating a popular game, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), haram in Indonesia. This edict has been issued by the Ulema Consultative Council (MPU) in Aceh. My commentary frames this edict as a case of moral panic surrounding video games circulation in the country. It is also a call for a deeper study of Indonesian video game cultures and their history. If you can read Indonesian, here is the link to the article!
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