Levelling up Australia’s video game sector engagement with Southeast Asia

Today, I will visit PAX Aus to discuss how the Australian Government can work with Australia's video game industry to deepen Australia's economic engagement with Southeast Asia.

The recently launched report Invested: Australia's Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 identified creative industries such as video gaming as one of the 10 priority sectors for growth.

Southeast Asia holds immense potential for Australia's flourishing video game industry, with around 270 million gamers and a video games market worth around US$5 billion.

At PAX Aus I will host a roundtable with the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) and their member organisations to listen to their experiences of investing in Southeast Asia and what more can be done to increase Australia's two-way trade and investment with the region.

On the first day of PAX Aus, I will meet with Australian and International video game developers, distributors and gamers themselves to see our games sector showcasing its latest and upcoming products, and will visit the Collingwood studios of Two Bulls/DEPT, one of Victoria's fantastic creative engineer studios, to see their digital content development in action.

The Australian Government is supporting Australia's video games industry deliver for Australian jobs and our economy.

This includes through our National Cultural Policy, Revive, by providing A$12.0 million to support digital games developers and small and medium independent games studios, and the Digital Games Tax Offset, a 30 percent tax offset on eligible expenditure for businesses spending over $500,000 on games development.