Building Communities in Gaming in Southeast Asia
By Jerry Soer, with help from Lydia Pratomo and Kiki Dina.
At Collab Asia, we work with over 200 gaming creators in Southeast Asia. I’ll focus on Indonesia, a country we’ve been very active in gaming for the past two years with a young population 60% of Southeast Asia's and hungry for gaming. We work with a lot of esports teams, professional players, tournament organizers, and gaming content creators.
Gaming in Southeast Asia has blown up in the past two years since Moonton’s Mobile Legends became a hit in 2017. The major factors that have helped the growth of gaming are: better & cheaper internet access, higher spec phones in the mid-range prices (USD$300 range), highly localised games and big investments in content, community, and esports.
The games that are popular now are all mobile, but not necessarily casual games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds. The top games in Indonesia for 2019 are free-to-play Battle Royale games such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, and Call of Duty Mobile, and MOBAs such as Mobile Legends. These are games played with groups of friends, in squads, often sitting next to each other. The emphasis on the game is teamwork and communication, these are highly social games. A single game typically takes 20-25 mins to finish and consumes less data than an equivalent length video stream. Gaming provides a lot of entertainment value for a fairly low price.
Mobile esports has exploded in the region in recent years. Some teams like EVOS esports have a presence in multiple games, and in multiple countries. They draw very large crowds online through live-streamed events, and in-person through stadium events.
There's a lot of government support for esports in various forms. Indonesia's President Jokowi endorses the President's Cup, which is a government-sanctioned tournament in the country, supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The governments in Southeast Asia use esports as a way to connect to younger voters. In early December 2019, the SEA Games held in the Philippines was the very first time esports will be a medal event. This is a milestone that could lead to the inclusion of esports in the Olympics eventually.
It's not all about professional players. Gaming content creators have huge audiences with very high retention. We have Bang Alex who is a PUBG Mobile gamer, Idang Nia who build her channel purely on Free Fire content, and Jonathan Liandi who is an ex-professional Mobile Legends player now focusing on content creation. The typical view duration per video from gamers is 9 minutes, which is 3x the typical length of a YouTube video, 9x the length of a standard Facebook video, and 36 times the length of a 15-second TikTok clip.
In terms of live-streaming platforms; YouTube was early in Indonesia and has a strong foothold in gaming. Creators make their money through preroll and midroll advertising on VOD.
In Thailand and the Philippines, Facebook Gaming has a stronger presence. They provide creators guaranteed monthly payment in exchange for a live stream quota. Facebook also closely associated itself with being the exclusive live stream partner for events such as Mobile Legends championships.
NimoTV focused on paying live streamers who are also content creators capable of retaining attention; such as Jonathan Liandi who focused on his “talkshows” as much as their gameplay. He covers stories about the players, how they survive, how they become a professional player, their family relationships, living in a gaming house, winning and losing matches. These stories create gains the best engagement on streaming platforms.
There are many reasons why some live-streaming platforms haven't worked out in Southeast Asia, but it's often because they take a business model from another country and that couldn't be implemented in Southeast Asia. For example, the tipping and micro gifting model in live streaming are not popular at large scale partly due to cultural differences. The bigger problem is that Southeast Asia is a highly fragmented region, with a large unbanked population and very low credit card uptake. Various electronic payment methods are available per country, but it’s only recently that some of these platforms reach critical mass. Therefore there’s been very high friction in monetizing fan engagement via live streams. Some of these platforms were just too early in the market.
At Collab Asia we run a network of owned and operated channels that feature our creators' content, game reviews, tips and tricks and esports news across triple-A games, mobile games and casual games. We hold regular community matches with guest creators or professionals enabled them to engage their fanbase directly via our channels. Brands can partner with gaming communities by sponsoring these fun matches.
There are numerous ways a brand can partner with gaming communities. Events such as esports tournaments allow for the most number of brand partnership opportunities such as billboards, merchandising tie ins, on-site activations, cosplayers, naming rights, etc. It's not easy and it’s a big commitment, but worth it for brands who know what they're doing in gaming. For brands who are new to gaming and want to test the waters, influencer marketing is the easiest and lowest barrier to entry.
A high profile example is Louis Vuitton's involvement in esports, by creating the trophy case and in-game items for this year’s League of Legends World Championship, marking the first time a high fashion brand associated itself with esports. Closer to home, AXE body spray collaborated with EVOS esports for their documentary series on YouTube.
It’s very early days but media buyers can now buy in-game programmatic advertising. Now you can put your logo inside the game itself; it’s unskippable, brand-safe, opens up access to hard to reach gaming audiences.
