Meet the Singapore trade association balancing support for indies with attracting overseas firms
At Gamescom Asia, former Sony exec Shawn Layden described Southeast Asia as the region "where all the next great opportunities are going to come from" for the games industry.
And that's exactly what the Singapore Games Association (SGGA) is hard at work trying to achieve in its part of the region, supporting, growing, and promoting the industry of the city-state.
Don Baey, business development director at indie developer Trueworld Studios and chairperson of the SGGA, is a founding member of the trade body. He started his games career at Ubisoft, one of the many AAA developers that have established their Southeast Asian presence in Singapore.
"About five years in, I decided to go into the government," Baey recalls. "This was the year we were celebrating our 50th year of independence, [and] there was this campaign that was done by a local government agency to promote and support the games industry.
"It was a very meaningful project for me... Because from your AAA big studio, large teams, that's your view of games initially [but] there's this whole world of independent creators, from solo developers to small [and] mid-size studios. And I'd not experienced games in this way. And that was my first taster of falling in love with the indie scene.
"And that's where, as a collective in the growing Singapore industry, some of the founders also felt we needed to bring the community together, because we knew that the government support may not be there forever. Things may change, so how can we support each other? And at the same time, also be a voice to help advocate for the industry, advocate for Singapore. That's how the association was started."
That was back in 2017; at the time the SGGA was known as the Singapore Games Guild, and was not formalised as a trade association. But it rapidly grew from its early initiatives, including monthly get togethers called 'DrinkUp'.
"It started with about ten, 20 people initially just on a monthly basis, and it has grown to a level where today
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