Asst. Prof. Dr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, depa President and CEO, said that the game industry has been growing since 2018 at 13.78%, 15.96% in 2019 and 34.89% in 2020 with overall market being worth 34,316 million baht. The rising trend is caused by an increase of mobile iOS and Android game platforms, 21,409 million baht in value and 61.34% of game industry market.

The survey results are used to help depa modify its policy and strategy for pushing Thailand’s digital content industry to the next level, especially driving Thai game developers to go out to international markets, and gaining market share from global game leaders.

Animation and Character industries are decreasing.

On the other hand, the animation industry market has reduced by 12.54%, with the overall value of 3,056 billion baht. The significant factor is the shift in customer behaviors, from watching animation via free-TV or pay-TV to watching content from online streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ etc. Also, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, movie theatres have been shut down, resulting in a decrease of animation industry to50.51% compared to 2019.

The trend is similar for the character industry, which has reduced by 8.67%, with overall value at 1,960 billion baht. An economic downturn from the COVID-19 has been causing a decrease of Thai people’s purchasing power, especially spending on extravagant products like characters.

Thailand’s digital content will continue to grow till 2023.

depa predicts that the industry will continue to grow for at least 3 years, with expected value at 49,649 billion baht in 2021, 59,136 billion baht in 2022 and 72,703 billion baht in 2023 due to the rising trend of game industry during the pandemic.

Animation industry is expected to recover after the reopening of cinemas on 1 October 2021 according to the government announcement. Revenue of the animation industry from cinema will hopefully spike up from 2020 as well.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Nuttapon also talked about depa’s mission to push the growth of Thailand’s digital content, focusing on 6 key points as following:

1. Enhancing knowledge and experiences for workforce in the sector, for example promoting game developers in designing capabilityand skills to compete with world-class developersand enhancing the quality of games;

2. Providing skill trainings in top 4 popular games including action, adventure, strategy, and sport (casual game) and pushing the Thai games to reach the same standard as world class products;

3. Providing business matching opportunities for Thai digital content entrepreneurs to access the funding and world market;

4. Conducting trainings on business management for digital startups or small businesses; 5. Collaborating with social platforms to create a good-quality content for theThai market together with expanding the market of the Thai digital content on various social platforms; and 6. Creating opportunities for the young generation influencers, promoting them to be creative with communication skills and able to use online social platform efficiently.

In addition, during the panel discussion, Senior Executive Vice President of depa, Dr. Kasititorn Pooparadai, and experts from various digital content associations have agreed on the ideas of leveraging Soft Power to

propel the development of Thai digital content industry. depa is committed to creating an ecosystem that promotes intellectual property content through the agency’s projects such as depa Game Accelerator Program and depa Game Online Academy and so on.

“Wehope that the findings of this survey will help both public and private sectors make business plans, policies and decisions related to the development of digital content industry, including the making of the 13th National Economic and Social Development Plan,” said President of depa.