In August this year, the film Zone Pro Site, a comedy about master chefs and the traditional Taiwanese dishes they create, was released and soon topped box offices around the country. The movie also stood out because it included digitally created content, the production of which has become a growing industry in Taiwan. Figures from the Digital Content Industry Promotion Office (DCIPO) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) show that in 2002, when the government began promoting the industry’s development, its production value was NT$130 billion (US$3.8 billion). By 2012, however, the figure had climbed to around NT$633 billion (US$21.4 billion). This year, the sector’s production value is expected to reach around NT$780 billion (US$26 billion).
The DCIPO is the executive body of the Digital Content Industry Development Advisory Group, which operates under the Executive Yuan and is headed by Minister without Portfolio Chang San-cheng (張善政). At the top level, the DCIPO divides Taiwan’s digital content industry into two broad categories, with one dedicated to content creation and the other to coordination and support. The creation category is further divided into audio-video applications, computer animation, digital publication and collection, gaming and e-learning, while content processing software, mobile applications and network services are listed under the coordination and support category.
According to the DCIPO, coordination and support account for around 65 percent of the digital content industry’s total production value. That is hardly surprising, given the emphasis Taiwan has long placed on developing information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and products. “Taiwan’s extensive ICT development has laid a solid foundation for digital content creation,” says Chu Li-chuan (曲立全), an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech). Chu previously worked as an aerospace engineer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States and is a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Cultural Creative Industry Association, which was established in 2006 in Taipei and counts a number of the leaders of Taiwan’s biggest digital content businesses among its board members.
The government’s promotion of the industry accelerated in 2007, when the MOEA’s Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) set up the Digital Content Industry Development and Assistance Project, which provides funding to support qualified companies as they work to develop new applications and services. This year, the project has focused on encouraging local companies to explore foreign markets and collaborate with international partners. “The bureau has been very adaptable and responsive to digital business trends, which can be quite different from the development model of traditional industries,” says Chung Shih-kai (鐘世凱), an evaluator for the IDB project and a professor in the Department of Multimedia and Animation Arts at National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA) in New Taipei City. Chung also serves as head of the Taipei-based Animation and Comic Creative Association, which was formed in 2006 to promote sales of local animation products, both in Mandarin-speaking societies and worldwide, by fostering cooperation between academia, business associations and the government.
In recent years, the government has promoted the growth of the digital content sector as part of a larger plan aimed at developing Taiwan’s cultural and creative industries. In May 2009, the Executive Yuan approved the “Creative Taiwan” project, which provides a blueprint for the development of six flagship cultural and creative sectors: digital content, design, film, handicrafts, pop music and television content. According to the DCIPO, Creative Taiwan is expected to attract more than NT$110 billion (US$3.6 billion) in investment and international cooperation projects in the digital content field this year.
Chu observes that digital content is uniquely suited to the film industry. “Hollywood films started seeking supercomputer engineering support two decades ago,” he says. “Today, computers have the accuracy and power to produce beautiful, sophisticated and high-resolution imagery.”
The digital imagery in Zone Pro Site—including a comic scene in which rice noodles dance in a diner’s mouth—was produced at the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC), a nonprofit organization that operates under the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL). In 2011, the NCHC established a facility known as the Render Farm, which is essentially a supercomputer that uses animation software, a cluster of graphic processing units, high-speed networks and massive storage space to produce 3-D digital visual effects for film and television. The NCHC is headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, northern Taiwan and receives most of its funding from the Cabinet-level National Science Council. In a statement about the high-speed 3-D rendering technique used to create visual effects for Zone Pro Site, the center said, “A scene can be rendered in less than 72 hours. Such strong technical support helps directors save time, which gives them a head start as they courageously embark on their film production adventures.”
Local developers are increasingly focused on creating games for mobile devices. (Photo by Central News Agency)
World-Class Capabilities
Digimax Inc., a creator of original animated films and provider of video postproduction services, is among the leading Taiwanese animation companies that have worked with the NCHC’s Render Farm. Digimax was founded in 1990 in Taipei and opened an office in Hollywood, California in 2001 in order to establish global contacts for content creation and distribution. In Taiwan, the company has worked with Taipei’s National Palace Museum (NPM) to create 10 short films that showcase the museum’s collection. One of those works, 2007’s Adventures in the NPM, captured the Grand Prize at the Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2008. In 2009, Digimax released Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, an action-adventure film that combines computer-generated imagery with actual footage collected during several NASA missions. “Digimax’s world-class digital capabilities are the reason that it was chosen for such international projects,” Chu says.
One of the most recent developments in Taiwan’s digital content industry occurred in late November 2012, when then US-based visual effects company Rhythm & Hues (R&H) inaugurated the VFX Center in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan. The center has the eventual goal of producing animated films and visual effects for moviemakers worldwide. Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Ang Lee (李安) worked extensively with R&H on his hit movie Life of Pi, much of which was filmed in Taichung City, central Taiwan. In line with an industry trend that has seen several US-based visual effects houses set up overseas studios to reduce labor costs, in 2011 R&H began to consider establishing a subsidiary in Taiwan. Lee introduced R&H executives to officials from the central and Kaohsiung City governments and R&H later made the decision to set up the VFX Center in the port city.
R&H’s initial investment in the center was NT$1 billion (US$33.8 million). The company brought in about 50 foreign specialists to train some 200 local visual effects artists. Although R&H filed for bankruptcy in the United States in February this year and was bought by Prana Studios—an animation and visual effects company with offices in Los Angeles and Mumbai—in March, R&H has continued to operate normally in Kaohsiung. Training has progressed at the VFX Center, which plans to begin producing digital imagery within the next three years.
Kaohsiung City Government views R&H’s presence in the city as a major attraction for other visual effects studios. The formation of an industrial cluster of such companies would make the city a player in the internationally competitive digital content field. At the inauguration ceremony for the VFX Center, Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said, “Several local companies have followed R&H to open businesses in Kaohsiung and I’ve seen many more enthusiastic young people coming here to work.”
It is the digital games field, however, that holds the highest profile in Taiwan’s digital content market. According to the DCIPO, in 2006 the sector’s annual production value was around NT$20 billion (US$614.8 million at the exchange rate for that year), but the figure has reached around NT$40 billion (US$1.3 billion) for each of the past three years.
Major players in the digital games sector include Gamania Digital Entertainment Co. and Soft-World International Corp. Gamania was founded in 1995 and began developing online games before expanding to create animated works. It soon became one of the fastest-rising local providers of digital entertainment on platforms ranging from desktop computers to mobile devices.
Since 2008, Gamania has cooperated with other leading game companies, a television station and a television production company to run the Taiwan e-Sports League, which organizes and televises live gaming competitions in an effort to “foster a new type of business through combining sports marketing, digital content, cultural creativity and pop culture,” the league said in a 2008 statement.
Taiwanese players celebrate their first-place finish at a 2012 international gaming competition in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Central News Agency)
A Formal Sport
One of the first e-sports leagues emerged in South Korea, where the government approved the establishment of the Korea e-Sports Association in 2000. Taiwan saw similar progress earlier this year when the Ministry of Education’s Sports Administration recognized gaming as a formal sporting category. In June this year, a Taiwanese e-sports team traveled with other local athletes to Incheon, South Korea to participate in the 2013 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, where the Taiwanese gamers won one silver and two bronze medals.
Soft-World was founded in Kaohsiung in 1983 and has grown to become one of the leading game developers and distributors in Taiwan and mainland China. In 1990, the company created and released Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most popular PC games ever produced in Taiwan.
In 2000, Soft-World acquired a 100-percent stake in Chinesegamer International Corp., which created Jin Yung, a popular online Chinese sword-fighting and chivalry game, in 2001. In September this year, Chinesegamer announced that it was developing a mobile version of its Huang Yi martial arts games, for which the company released online versions in 2006 and 2011.
In addition to featuring classical Chinese themes, the Soft-World group incorporates content from locally created, Taiwanese-style works. During this year’s Tokyo Game Show, for example, Soft-World exhibited new online and mobile games based on locally televised glove puppetry shows and fantasy works by popular Taiwanese novelist Giddens, the penname of Ke Jing-teng (柯景騰).
Game companies play a significant role in promoting digital content creation, Chung points out. “They are locomotives of digital entertainment business development in Taiwan,” he says.
Soft-World chairman Wang Chun-po (王俊博) is a standing board member of the Taipei Computer Association (TCA), which was founded in 1974 and represents manufacturers of computer components, networking equipment, semiconductors and software. Organizing the Taipei Game Show is one of the TCA’s most important tasks in the software field. The first exhibition was held in 2003 and since then the show has grown into an annual event that is one of the largest of its kind in Asia. The show provides a venue for game developers to display new products, as well as hold business meetings, gaming competitions and live concerts featuring music used in game soundtracks. The next Taipei Game Show will take place in January 2014 at the Taipei World Trade Center.
Taipei Tech’s Chu says the continued cultivation of digital artists is crucial for the sector’s development in Taiwan. The digital content market requires a combination of cultural, artistic and technological strength and thus represents a country’s “soft power and creative force,” he says.
Chung has been impressed by the creativity shown by local animators, effects artists and game developers. “Our young, emerging digital artists might not be quite as good as their counterparts from mainland China in areas like art design, but they show more liveliness and originality,” the NTUA professor says, referring to his experiences as a judge in international competitions.
In August this year, Chung was pleased to learn that students from his department at NTUA had won the top three prizes at the 2013 NCHC Animation Challenge, for which participants were allowed to use the organization’s Render Farm to create their works. “We want to combine efforts from different fields of expertise to help create Taiwan’s digital creative future,” then NARL president Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) said at the competition’s awards ceremony. “Through the meeting of technology and cultural creativity on platforms such as the Render Farm, Taiwan is in all likelihood heading toward a promising, innovative future.”
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw