Shifting the Focus to East and Southeast Asia: A Critical Review of Regional Game Research

Abstract

This paper examines the prominence of East and Southeast Asia as a focus of communications and game studies. The idea of going regional when researching video games comes from the fact that each locale has its trait to construct its gaming industry and gaming environment from which the gaming experience is also reflected differently. The reasons provided, ranging from the regional market's dynamic nature to the attention that the governing states have paid to the gaming industry, help place Asia–Pacific in general and East and Southeast Asia particularly in the global gaming juxtaposition where the other part is usually the Western countries. Examples that help highlight the rising prominence of the regions as the most potential areas are also considered. This review's findings indicate that East and Southeast Asia have gradually built up their reputation by actively joining the designing, processing, and distributing digital products system. Thus, the focus of future research on the regions should be more concerned with video gaming.