As crowds abate following the Lunar New Year, there is one destination where the holiday still feels in full swing. The Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center has stayed busy this week, with the Taipei Game Show opening on Thursday after the immensely popular Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival ended on Tuesday.
Now that international borders have reopened, the two events once again welcomed creators and special guests from abroad to the delight of local fans. Crowds lined up hours before the opening of the comics and animation festival on Friday last week, hoping to meet the teams behind popular Japanese series such as Spy x Family and Chainsaw Man, as well as snag merchandise on offer at the annual event.
The popularity of these shows exhibits a passion that runs deep in Taiwan for what is fondly termed “nerd culture.” Yet the nation’s love of video games, comics and animation translates beyond mere fandom into an increasingly robust force in the industry.
At the same time as the comics festival, in France, a group of Taiwanese comic artists was featured at the Angouleme International Comics Festival to enthusiastic acclaim. According to industry visitors to the booth, Taiwanese comics are popular for their imaginative and diverse imagery, already distinct from the Japanese manga that inspired them, and they are becoming more popular as interest feeds demand for translation, creating a virtuous cycle.
Indie video games are also becoming a powerful force in the industry after the breakaway success of Red Candle’s Detention, an atmospheric horror game based on the White Terror era. A few other games have come since — including SIGONO’s OPUS series, The Legend of Tianding and Carto — that have achieved acclaim in the cutthroat gaming world, despite coming from a chronically overlooked market. When Detention came out in early 2017, there were only about a dozen Taiwanese studios exhibiting at the Taipei Game Show. The current edition features at least 44.
While recognition is slowly building, it has been a long time coming. Although Taiwanese studios have long had a hand in popular triple-A games such as Uncharted and Destiny 2, few original games have broken through. This is partially the fault of industry bias, but a weak ecosystem is equally to blame, as inexperienced investors fail to capitalize on successes and keep to lucrative mobile games. The comic and animation industries are just as difficult, dominated as they are by other regions better connected than Taiwan.
As general interest in the nation increases with shifting geopolitical winds, Taiwan would be remiss to ignore its extant talents. Fondness for a favorite game or comic can do more to generate goodwill in the hearts of people around the world than 1,000 promotional videos, as Japan and South Korea can strongly attest. Hyperlocal content — such as Detention; its follow-up game Devotion, based in the 1980s; and The Legend of Tianding, based on the Japanese occupation — can help people abroad understand Taiwan and its culture on a visceral level. Interest breeds interest, leading to more tourism, more understanding and more goodwill for a country that depends on it for survival.
As Japan and South Korea realized years ago, this pool of talent can be tapped through investment and guidance. Creators have already created domestic networks for themselves, but stronger government support is needed to help them communicate with foreign investors and build networks abroad. Above all, Taiwanese should be proud of their talents as creators as well as consumers, as the content created here deserves its place on the world stage.
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