Press
8 Questions for Alvin Juban;
Bio: Alvin Juban
What have you been busy with lately?
Our industry current priority for both Games and Animation is Upskilling; and bringing in more foreign resource speakers and trainors is quite an expensive task. There are always new tools and pipelines available for our trade, but this has to be matched with requisite training. For our studio side, we are burning with excitement with our new IPs for release for both Game and Animation. We are on track to achieve a breakthrough in our domestic digital entertainment scene. We have a small market compared to India or China but if we strike first and fast with our combination of products then we should be making a little of history.
In 2016 58% of growth of the global games markets comes from the Asia-Pacific Region – what kind of role does the Philippines play?
As we have western affinity, we are great consumers of their games although revenue wise, we rank lower than most of our neighbors. The role we see for ourselves is to be the production hub of Games and Game related businesses for SEA.
In what way is the Games Market in the Philippines different form the rest of SEA?
We have a large (102M) english speaking population and the largest 18-24 yr old population - presenting a valuable potential for revenue. Our steady economy and improving connectivity should make this possible in the next few years. However until this time comes, we must quickly cultivate own IP to be consumed by the local market much like some of our neighbors have done over the years.
The strong ties with the West, especially with the US leads to a dominance of US content in your market, how do you want to change this? How do you want to foster local content?
My mission for participation in Storydrive is learn how to do this better. Currently, being part of an Association gives me leverage to connect across multiple government agencies and other creative associations - so "best practices" from other countries would be quite helpful. Studio - wise we are launching in our deeply researched IP's in Games and Animation mid year and we hope it paves as a great example to inspire other studios to make the same investment.
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Self-Publishing is huge in the Philippines, do you cooperate with any of these platforms?
Not yet.
How do you collaborate with the traditional Publishing Industry?
Honestly, I only had the opportunity to connect with our trade publishing industry last year and I am trying to make the most out of it by participating in all their activities which takes IP to print, and then print to digital. I understand that digital option is still a bit vague for most of the pillars of industry so I need to give them the confidence that we already have the technical expertise to help bring their IP to market.
Where do you see the biggest similarities between the two spaces? What are the chances of a closer cooperation?
We both are challenged to create original IP and achieve global market success.
