Cross-country comparison in Asia: Lessons and Implications for esports sustainability in Hong Kong

Abstract

Background Compared with countries that lead in the esports industry, esports in Hong Kong have a relatively short history and have lagged behind in the trend. To identify a successful formula for Hong Kong, the successful experience should be used and imitated for reference to reinforce and perfect another country or region’s development in the discussion. Thus, the present review extends the vision to the Asian regions (China, Korea & Japan) and focus upon the comparison of Asian countries by using the esports development ecosystem in terms of an interaction of six macro systems: Information and Communications Technology, Education, Social Acceptance, Government Engagement, Nongovernmental Organisations, Esports Development (Lam & Wong, 2022). These “Big three” in Asia are chosen for making a comparison with Hong Kong because of their top performance on esports earning, penetration rate of esports viewership and gaming revenue in Asia and even worldwide. Methods Literature review concerning journal papers, book chapter, market reports and government reports was conducted from 2008 to present. Keywords include esports, electronic games, ecosystem, China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong were input via electronic databases, such as ProQuest and Google Scholar. Findings Hong Kong is compromised by a black box in esports in which Hong Kong has better infrastructure in information and communications technology than China, Korea and Japan. But Hong Kong obviously lags behind China, Korea and Japan because of comparative disadvantages in education, social acceptance, government engagement, nongovernmental organisations, and esports development. Discussion While Korea has the world’s first esports academy, the current Hong Kong esports education mainly focuses on streaming technologies, digital media production, event management, recreation marketing, but there are no training schools or recognised training programmes and no education strategy for cultivating professional esports players. Moreover, social acceptance is relatively low in Hong Kong whereas there is a PC Bang in Korea, esports Hall of Fame in China and acceptance of diversity of subculture in Japan. Finally, Hong Kong also lacks esports venues, such as professional game stadium, integrative/ special Esports facility and leisure game arena for daily training, esports competitions, facilitating tourism industry, and promoting esports culture to the public in comparison to Korea, China and Japan.