[Level Up KL 2021] Darang Candra Talks China’s New Regulations And The Potential of the SEA Mobile Games Market

Darang Candra, Director of SEA Research at Niko Partners presented at MYDCF 2021 today, giving valuable insights into the SEA game market.

“[SEA] is a mobile first market”, he says, encapsulating the biggest point of the talk- that if you wanted to penetrate the market, your best bet was going to be making a mobile title.

According to Darang, at least in the SEA region, mobile gaming was vastly outpacing its PC counterpart, thanks in part to better infrastructure, as well as a lower barrier to entry- referring to how mobile games are typically playable on most phones, while PC and console gaming required you to buy a specialized device, and be conscious about things like specs.

“Look at the ownership of gadgets”, he says, explaining the phenomenon.

While RPGs were a popular trend in the SEA market, Darang mentioned the real growth area would be mobile esports- which saw a 20% increase in viewership year-on-year from 2019 to 2020.

He said that mobile esports also saw 50% more growth compared to traditional esports, with Asian making up 15% of the mobile esports revenue, showing that we could expect to see way more large-scale mobile esports events, such as Mobile Legends or Arena of Valor tournaments.

The biggest clue-in to this wasn’t just growth numbers- Darang also pointed to what he described as “non-endemic sponsors”- that is to say, sponsors from outside the traditional games industry. According to Darang, you could see more and more tournaments sponsored by banks or F&B companies, which is a good sign that the industry is ripe for more growth.

The Effects Of China’s Tightened Regulations

Darang Candra also commented on the effects of China’s increased regulations on gaming, most notably its minor ban- which limits minors game time to 3 hours a week, enforced on the game developers side.

He says that on a surface level, the new regulations wouldn’t “Directly affect China’s game exports”, basically meaning don’t expect titles like Honkai Impact to have a radical shift.

This was because the regulations were targeted at minors, with anyone over 18 having their access to games be largely unchanged.

That being said, the threat of new regulations isn’t great for businesses, and he says you can still expect some fallout from putting the game industry in government crosshairs.

Particularly, Darang says you can expect to see more mergers and acquisitions out of China, with companies like Tencent and Netease potentially moving development out of China, “expanding their market” outwards.

Join Us!