SGU, 4 Dec 2009, The seminar which was held by the IT Faculty at the Swiss German University on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 got a lot of attention from the audience which came from senior high schools, 1st semester students, 5th semester students, and some 7th semester students and parents. The seminar was about the opportunities and challenges for Indonesia in competing in the IT digital creative media industry. This seminar was presented by Hari Sungkari as the representative from the Masyarakat Industri Kreatif Teknologi Informasi (MIKTI) and Marlin Sugama as the Co-Founder of Game and Animation Developer of PT. Main Game Studio, a local industry which focuses on developing games and animation for the local and international market.

Opportunity

The IT digital creative media industry in Indonesia has a lot of potential. One of the reasons is outsourcing from international companies. Indonesia is currently ranked 5th among outsourcing locational competing with India and China. Big games developing industries such as Blizzard and Activision are some of the examples where Indonesian workers are used. Other opportunities for working in the IT digital creative media industry are the mobile game developing industry and the edutainment games industry. The internet is the primary source for people searching for information beating newspapers and other printed media. Schools and Universities also turn to digital teaching which utilizes edutainment or games as a media in teaching certain subjects. It is so appealing that it has become standard teaching in schools in Malaysia, Singapore, and other overseas countries.

Challenges

The challenges in IT digital creative media industry, however, lies in the entrepreneurship factor. Forget about competing with the “Big Boys” of gaming industry such as Konami, Square Enix, or Blizzard Studios, we have to worry about competition in the Southeast Asia region. The important factors in building a career in IT digital creative media industry lies in 3 important individual qualities: Skill, Knowledge, and Attitude. It is very difficult to find an individual with all these 3 qualities. “An investor is easy to find, but talent and attitude are hard to discover” is what Marlin Sugama says about her experience battling in the IT digital creative media industry.

Overcoming the Challenges

In tackling these challenges, exposure is important. You have to be involved in many competitions involving your work. Once you have the necessary promotion, your work will be recognized and people will be interested in investing in your product. However, making a product takes a lot of thinking. You have to start small and see how things go. Once people like your product, then you can upgrade your product little by little until you have a massive product to be sold in the international market.

Game Workshop: RPGMaker XP

On Sunday, November 16th 2009, a workshop were held by the Information Technology Faculty to introduce the concept of game development. The engine that was chosen as the media of teaching was RPGMaker XP as a fundamental in putting programming and art together as a game. RPGMaker XP is a game engine developed in Visual Basic by Enterbrain Co Ltd and it is one the means of making a role playing game (RPG). The target participants for this game development are those who are still in their High School years. They are expected to be eager in exploring and have creativity in making a story-based game. There were 5 people expected to attend to this workshop according to the registration. However, it turned out that the participant numbers expanded to 13 people. This shows that there is interest in developing the eyes of youths and adolescents. We also develop a simple RPG game. This game can be obtained at: http://kazasou.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/rpgmaker-xp-the-advent/

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