Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in the sector while Japan remains one of its leaders

Video games are a way for different states around the world to put themselves forward and influence populations. This is the case of Saudi Arabia, which invests massively in e-sport and Japan, which makes the export of cultural goods an economic and diplomatic strategy.

The announcement of the new episode of Zelda by Nintendo, on June 18, 2024, had the effect of a bomb on the Internet, which proves the still important influence of Japan in the world of video games. An influence that Saudi Arabia would like to have, since after sport, it is in e-sport that the kingdom invests massively.

Export of Japanese cultural goods

On June 18, the Japanese giant Nintendo announced upcoming new products on the Internet and they quickly made the rounds in media specializing in digital entertainment. The announcement of a new episode of the saga Zelda has set the world in turmoil, since the player will no longer control the character Link, as in previous opuses, but Princess Zelda, who becomes the new heroine and borrows everyday objects and not weapons, to face obstacles.

With Zelda, Mario, Pokemon and others, Nintendo has achieved phenomenal international expansion, because it touches several generations at the same time. Zelda has been around since 1986 and has lived on different consoles. The new adventure, Echoes of Wisdomwill be marketed on September 26, 2024.

For years, Japanese content has continued to invade the planet and the goal of Japanese companies is obviously that international expansion continues, especially since the market in Japan risks shrinking for demographic reasons. .

Nintendo, Sony and others already have a very large global lead and extremely extensive catalogs of content, but new technologies constantly force them to question themselves, while relying on their sure values, their characters.

The Japanese government wants to push more companies to use artificial intelligence, platforms and social networks to project their creations abroad. He even wants to make them change structurally, so that they think from the outset of the international public and no longer just the domestic market.

The State wants to become more involved in the export of manga, anime and video games and hopes to quadruple the amount of exports in 10 years. Everything not only has an economic vocation, it is also about strengthening the diplomacy of the archipelago and its soft power.

The soft power video game for Saudi Arabia

For several years, the Wahhabi kingdom has not only spent its billions on sport, but also on e-sport and video game competitions. From July 3 to 7, 2024, the Esports World Convention, the new world cup for the sector, will take place in Riyadh. 19 titles are at stake, with a record sum of $60 million on the table, distributed among the winners.

Saudi Arabia wants to establish itself as the leader in e-sport on the international scene, because for the kingdom, video games are a tool of soft power. After the billions invested in football, contemporary art and tourism, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to make his country the leading video game hub in the world. MBS, who is said to love playing consoles and greatly admires Japanese soft power.

Obviously, like all Saudi Arabia’s investments in the cultural or sporting sector, the goal is also to forget its bad image. The kingdom is still one of the most repressive countries in the world in terms of human rights, according to international NGOs, with 170 death row inmates executed last year. Furthermore, no one has forgotten the journalist Jamal Khashoqgi, murdered and cut into pieces in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

These investments in the video game sector also have an economic objective, because Mohammed Ben Salmane is preparing his country for the post-oil era, a windfall which still represents more than 60% of the kingdom’s income. Among other things, it is banking on the gaming industry to diversify its economy. In 2021, the AS Public Investment Fund created Savvy, a company responsible for developing the sector, in which tens of billions of dollars are invested.

To run Savvy, as in football, Riyadh hired a foreigner, the North American Brian Ward, who worked for the biggest video game companies. Its mission is very simple, to conquer a booming market, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, where the population is young and the digital economy is booming.