Jonathan Bha­gan

Some may still think of video games as child­ish di­ver­sions, but gam­ing and re­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies are ma­jor dri­vers of the world econ­o­my and helped bring about the AI rev­o­lu­tion.

France has a GDP of US$3 tril­lion and is one of the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced na­tions in the world, with one of the low­est emis­sion rates of CO2 per unit of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced due to its mas­tery of nu­clear pow­er.

In the con­text of a na­tion that ex­ports fight­er jets to In­dia, it was both sur­pris­ing and re­fresh­ing to read the fol­low­ing head­line pub­lished in Gam­er­ant.com in an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by M.Za­far:

“French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron pub­licly praised Clair Ob­scur: Ex­pe­di­tion 33 for its strong launch, not­ing it as a big achieve­ment for France’s grow­ing video game in­dus­try. De­vel­oped by Mont­pel­li­er’s Sand­fall In­ter­ac­tive, Clair Ob­scur: Ex­pe­di­tion 33 marks the stu­dio’s first project and quick­ly caught at­ten­tion for blend­ing turn-based me­chan­ics with a high­ly unique, artis­tic style.”

The pres­i­dent of France took note of a suc­cess­ful video game that was launched for PC, PS5 and Xbox be­cause he knows the mas­sive eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al im­pact that video games have.

Video game tech­nol­o­gy is al­so the ba­sis of most vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty and “Meta­verse” tech­nol­o­gy, as the same Uni­ty and Un­re­al game en­gines are used to cre­ate 3-D worlds. Nvidia’s pur­suit of video gam­ing pro­cess­ing pow­er is what helped to birth the mod­ern AI rev­o­lu­tion which then led Nvidia to reach the sta­tus of the most valu­able com­pa­ny in the world in 2024, when its stock val­u­a­tion reached US$3.34 tril­lion. For con­text, Nvidia was worth more than France’s GDP.

Chat­g­pt’s da­ta cen­tres run on Nvidia GPUs that have been fine-tuned for AI work­loads. How­ev­er, the first mod­ern break­throughs in neur­al net­works used off-the-shelf Nvidia GPUs meant for gam­ing back in 2012.

https://www.sta­tista.com pro­vid­ed the fol­low­ing da­ta and pro­jec­tions on the val­ue of the video game mar­ket:

“Rev­enue in the Games mar­ket world­wide is pro­ject­ed to reach US$522.46bn in 2025. Rev­enue is ex­pect­ed to ex­hib­it an an­nu­al growth rate (CA­GR 2025-2029) of 7.25%, lead­ing to a pro­ject­ed mar­ket vol­ume of US$691.31bn by 2029.”

How much of this 522.46 bil­lion USD mar­ket is T&T tap­ping in­to? While I am a huge ad­vo­cate for agri­cul­ture, the glob­al co­coa mar­ket is worth on­ly 26.70 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to mar­ket re­search an­a­lysts. Soft­ware com­pa­nies should al­so re­ceive in­cen­tives along­side agri­cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives.

I asked Manuel Hen­der­son-Brown, a lo­cal dig­i­tal cre­ator and gam­ing afi­ciona­do, to speak on the need for video game stu­dios in T&T.

“The con­tent cre­ation, video game and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in­dus­tries are im­per­a­tive and quin­tes­sen­tial for eco­nom­ic and so­cial growth. This goes be­yond cor­po­rate/gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance, and peo­ple need to em­pow­er them­selves.

“An­i­ma­tors can’t work for com­pa­nies who’ll be putting all their work in an NDA and get­ting a pit­tance for their con­tri­bu­tion that no­body will know and see. We need con­tent that AC­TU­AL­LY can be con­sumed by the mar­ket. At this point, Ja­maica is cur­rent­ly the cul­ture bomb in the US/UK/EU, where­as the re­main­ing Caribbean coun­tries are just con­sid­ered lit­tle Ja­maicas with dif­fer­ent flags.

“Trinidad cul­ture/iden­ti­ty isn’t as preva­lent in the on­line mar­ket, and our strongest pen­e­tra­tion has to be done by the ex­pen­di­ture of the tourism in­dus­try, the food­ies (which isn’t pen­e­trat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets). The mon­e­tary gain from on­line re­mote de­vel­op­ment and work­ing with for­eign com­pa­nies or as a stand­alone is para­mount for growth in Trinidad. The mon­e­tary gain from on­line re­mote de­vel­op­ment and work­ing with for­eign com­pa­nies or as an in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor is para­mount for growth in Trinidad.”

I al­so spoke with the cre­ative di­rec­tor and brand spe­cial­ist at GNC Labs, Ka­iron New­ton.

“Trinidad can’t di­ver­si­fy with talk shops and re­cy­cled poli­cies. The $500 bil­lion video game in­dus­try is one of the fastest-grow­ing sec­tors glob­al­ly, yet we treat it like a hob­by. Mean­while, our most cre­ative youth ei­ther mi­grate or with­er. We have the sto­ries, the tal­ent and the cul­ture—what we lack is vi­sion. Game de­vel­op­ment isn’t child’s play—it’s dig­i­tal oil. Stu­dios can be ex­port en­gines, job cre­ators and cul­tur­al pow­er­hous­es. If we keep ig­nor­ing this space, we’re not just miss­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty—we’re ac­tive­ly choos­ing ir­rel­e­vance in the new glob­al econ­o­my. It is about time that Trinidad plays to win.”

I urge the new Gov­ern­ment to part­ner with the hand­ful of soft­ware com­pa­nies and dig­i­tal cre­ators in T&T to pro­vide tax in­cen­tives for soft­ware de­vel­op­ment in gen­er­al, and gam­ing specif­i­cal­ly. A pop­u­lar video game set in T&T has the po­ten­tial to pro­mote our cul­ture, art and mu­sic on the world stage and bring in rev­enue and much-need­ed for­eign ex­change.

Even if the lo­cal in­dus­try is not ready to launch a high-pro­file game, they can bid on con­tracts to do work for ma­jor game stu­dios world­wide and learn from the ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing on big-bud­get games. Soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and game de­sign should be con­sid­ered as part of any eco­nom­ic plan for the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of T&T’s econ­o­my.