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Vietnam Digital Content Firms Can Exist, but Cannot Live Well
3 April, 2013
Weak in creativeness, lacking the qualified labor force, while having no considerable support
from the State, digital content firms have been living, but in poor conditions.
Lacking creativeness
In the digital content industry, creating content is the most important factor for any firms to
compete with others to exist. However, Vietnamese digital content firms now have problems in
technical creativeness, according to Le Hong Minh, General Director of VNG.
Some months ago, VNG implemented an online game project for the Japanese market. Since it
was an important project, VNG prepared 20 workers during 8 months, which included 10
workers specializing in drawing. However, despite the thorough preparation, 50 percent of the
images were refused by the Japanese partner.
After that, VNG hurried to look for the specialists in the field on all hi-tech forums. However,
after one month of implementing the project with the specialists, the percentage of images
refused by the Japanese partner rose to 95 percent. Especially, the Japanese partner pointed out
some images which were the “copied products,” not creative products.
The chronic disease of the digital content industry is the lack of a qualified labor force. After five
years of development, the online game industry has not made any considerable progress. It is

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estimated that there are only 1,000 people who can work in the industry, and most of them have
not undergone any training course in the field, because there is no such training establishment in
Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the figures are 100,000 in South Korea and 300,000 in China. This explains why
Vietnamese games are always inferior to foreign ones.
VNG once tasted failure when it launched Thuan Thien Kiem game onto the market. VNG spent
4 years to make the game and made heavy investment on the project. It even invited Mai Phuong
Thuy, the 2006 Miss Vietnam to act as the representative and participate in promotion activities.
However, the game still could not find players. It was because the quality of the game was far
below that of South Korean and Chinese products.
Policies don’t encourage digital content firms
Digital content firms have many times call for the state’s support to help develop the fledgling
industry.
The government, aware of the problems of the industry, has laid out some policies with offered
investment incentives to encourage enterprises to invest in the field.
However, Minh said the policies are not transparent, while government agencies have been very
slow in setting up policies. Meanwhile, Facebook only needed one year to increase the number
of Vietnamese members from 3 million to 12 million. It takes only six months to make a foreign
game popular with the highest number of players in Vietnam.
Dr. Nguyen Trong Duong, Director of the Information Technology Department of the Ministry
of Information and Communication, has admitted that the current regulations on the preferences
for the digital content industry are vague, which cannot help the firms in the industry.
The government, for example, has stipulated a series of incentives for digital content firms in the
Decree 108. However, in fact, the firms still cannot enjoy the incentives, simply because there
has been no definition about what the “digital content production” means.
In Vietnam, very few enterprises only specialize in making and selling products. The majority of
enterprises make products just to sell services. Since it’s difficult to differentiate the production
and the service providing, a lot of digital content firms cannot enjoy tax incentives.
(Source: Buu Dien)