ONLINE GAMING: THE TRANSNATIONALIZATION NEXUS SEEN IN THE CASE OF VIETNAM

Abstract

This research explored the transnational experience extracted from the online gaming culture of Vietnam seen from three perspectives: the players, the Vietnamese game companies, and the state. The main concept is transnationalization, which consists of internal and external factors. The internal elements include the interaction between players of one country and the video games designed and released by another country’s developers. Online games companies, including the developing units and the distributing firms, manifest the external elements. Those enterprises have transnationalized through the exchange of people (staffs), new business models and financing systems, the developing process, and especially the localization process. This study also examines the role of the state in managing and controlling online games in Vietnam. The socialist-oriented market economy and its internal ambivalence are conditions to nurture the attitude of reluctance, which is the contradiction between the ideology (communism) and the grip on power, and the open economy.