Play As A Lifestyle — APAC POV
What toy makers and other brands need to know about the play trends in the APAC region
By Sharon Soh (Head Of Strategy, UM APAC) and Grace Espinoza (Senior Strategist, UM APAC); with research contributions from UM China and Lodestar UM India
No play till you’re done studying! Until just a few years ago, parents in Asia would constantly be demanding their kids to study, as children in many Asian countries have a strict childhood focused more on early education than social development. Playtime with other children is often replaced with tutoring sessions, music lessons, and other structured activities to help advance them towards future academic success. However, with many new theories on parenting styles and childhood education coming to light, the traditional “Asian Tiger Parent” — who puts their children under rigorous and stressful academic pressures — has been under scrutiny, resulting in a gradual shift in perspective towards play (and rest) being no less important.
These days, not only are Asian kids getting more play time in their daily lives, adults too are joining in the fun! With the rapid development of technology in this part of the world, play is heavily influenced by various digital forces with increasing smartphone usage being front and centre of this shift in play behaviours. Mobile gaming, for instance, has taken off phenomenally in the APAC region, which now accounts for more than 50% of total global gaming revenue in 2018. Indeed, play has become a lifestyle as the concept of gamification percolates through many aspects of modern life and blurs the line between real and virtual. Ultimately, the realms of play are being redefined and brands that target kids and their parents can capitalise on the many emerging opportunities that play presents.
Play has become a lifestyle as the concept of gamification percolates through many aspects of modern life and blurs the line between real and virtual.
Play as Entertainment
In Asia Pacific, animation content and IP marketing continue to play a significant role across the region, fuelling a huge rise in local IP popularity as these characters provide more relevance and identity for kids. In India, for example, the favourite characters for kids are Chota Bheem and Motu Patlu, the former being the lead character in an Indian animated comedy adventure television series and the latter being an Indian animated sitcom television series featuring two best friends, Motu and Patlu. Super Wings, another animated television series co-produced by South Korean and Chinese production houses, has also captured the hearts of both Chinese and South Korean kids, with the series making its debut recently in other markets like Australia and Singapore. These local characters have gone on to be licensed as toys gaining further popularity amongst kids by bringing the virtual world to the physical world.
Content streaming has grown rapidly across Asia and time spent on online viewing has risen significantly with viewers in Philippines, India, and Singapore leading the way, spending more than eight hours a week watching online videos. As in the West, toy unboxing and review videos have now become popular entertainment for millions of Asian kids and their parents watching YouTube, resulting in online videos and on-demand videos becoming a major driver behind toy sales. Toys like L.O.L Surprise, which taps into the anticipation of unboxing, have become immensely popular across Asia Pacific as kids here are becoming conditioned to crave the regular hits of dopamine release.
The lines between virtual and physical will continue to blur with Asia tipped to be the world’s largest amusement park market by 2020. Although China has been targeted as a key growth market, a number of other theme parks are also scheduled to open in the coming years in Japan, South Korea, and key parts of South East Asia. With increased spending from both the industry and consumers, we will see these entertainment destinations providing families with more ways to connect and over compelling experiences. This is also driving an increase in popularity for nostalgic IP-based theme parks, with brands like Disney becoming shared passions between parents and children.
The traditional amusement park has also taken on a radical spin in South Korea with the launch of virtual reality (VR) theme parks. The country’s largest urban virtual reality-theme park, Monster VR, opened its doors to the public in 2017 and a number of other players like VR Square and VRIGHT have since launched a few other parks in various Korean cities. This trend has also caught on in other markets with Headrock VR recently opening one of its parks on Sentosa island in Singapore.
While western consumers continue to remain resistant to VR, even in the context of an out-of-home entertainment experience, the APAC region has largely embraced VR as a play option. Push from various governments and tech companies — notably in China, South Korea, and Singapore — to drive VR/AR development and adoption, coupled with a broad variety of VR experiences available including gaming content, along with a consumer base that is generally hungry for innovative experiences, are all unique regional factors that contributed to the success of VR theme parks in APAC.
We live in an era of digital content and in this region more so than most, consumers now expect an integrated experience, demanding both exciting content and the empowerment to share it instantly, wherever they are. With digital content and technology-enabled experiences being the key driving force for entertainment, brands now have a multitude of playful ways to engage and entertain both kids and adults alike.
Consumers now expect an integrated experience, demanding both exciting content and the empowerment to share it instantly, wherever they are.
Play as Socialization
Virtual playgrounds are also sweeping through the region. esports is now massive in markets like Australia, South Korea, and China. Recently, it has been taking off in the South East Asian region as well. To put its power into perspective, the League of Legends (LOL) esports championship in Korea united over 100 million concurrent viewers within a virtual social setting — that’s an audience size that rivals the Super Bowls! Audience penetration in Australia is also over-indexing, with 90% of live gaming content viewed on Twitch, and a unique audience of 1.5 million each month, spending on average three hours daily. As for China, it is already one of the world’s largest gaming marketplaces alongside the US and Europe in terms of esports market revenues with over 170 million esports players and fans across China.
Gaming platforms such as LOL and Fortnite are leveraging high profile influencers in other platforms to bring in new audiences and also create new and exclusive viewing occasions. The virtual live concert that DJ Marshmello held in Fortnite, which millions of players attended as their in-game avatars in early February was just a start, as the company behind Fortnite has clearly stated its intention to evolve the game into a “collective virtual shared space”. As gaming increases its share of consumer attention, other entertainment industries are jumping on board to create new opportunities to engage with their audiences. For example, across South East Asia, we are seeing an increase in festivals that cater to both gaming and electronic music fans, which routinely draw big sponsorships as brands realise the power that lies at the intersection of passions.
Thanks to the mass adoption of smartphones and social media in the region, most games are now intrinsically social. The Indian mobile market, for example, is going through an incredible transformation at the moment — as internet access becomes increasingly available to the middle class, we see the growth of mobile games trailing closely behind the rapid rise of video games. We also see a multitude of local players emerging, who are enabling play in really local ways — for example, whilst PUBG (Player Unknown Battleground) is the current favourite in India, local titles such as Ludo King are also gaining popularity.
In China, we are now seeing offline games like Werewolf being housed entirely within a social platform rather than in a separate app. In fact, Werewolf has been so popular that it has not only proliferated the online space via the game app and through social media, it has also penetrated live streaming platforms as a reality game show featuring famous esports personalities, as well as extended into the physical space with the opening of JYClub, a dedicated venue for Werewolf players. To further capitalise on the popularity of gaming, WeChat has also introduced “mini games,” opening up the platform to external developers to quickly scale the development and supply side. Over 500 mini games are now available via the super app, cumulatively amassing nearly half a billion users.
Japan too remains one of the hottest mobile gaming markets in the world. However, the console is also experiencing a social renaissance with the launch of Nintendo Switch. One-part handheld and one-part home console, the hybrid console is an undeniable success, becoming the fastest selling home console in Japan with 32 million units sold worldwide by the end of 2018. To further capture the hearts and heads of the family segment, Nintendo has since introduced Labo, a series of DIY kits crafted to work with Nintendo Switch™. It allows parents and kids to build Toy-Con creations from cardboard and bring them to life with their Switch console, making gaming more physically social and interactive.
Indeed, gaming is now no longer a niche and can be tapped into as a powerful marketing tool, given its comparable social and cultural influence versus other cultural sectors like sports and music. With technology advancements, toys can also be reimagined and gamified, creating new ways for parents and kids to interact with toys and adding value beyond their conventional core offerings.
Gaming is now no longer a niche and can be tapped into as a powerful marketing tool.
Play as Education
In recent years, educators and education systems in APAC regions are becoming less academically oriented, dovetailing with a rise of play-based learning in these traditionally schoolwork-oriented societies. Many are also integrating technology into early childhood development with educators leveraging play and technology to support young children’s development and learning in group-oriented environments. In Japan, nearly 400 kindergartens and nursery schools are using mobile apps designed for pre-schoolers. Even in China, where rote learning has been a bedrock of its education system, play as education has been slowly creeping into many schools’ curriculum. For example, LEGO has an education programme targeted at preschool, elementary, and middle schools, whereby it provides multiple educational sets, lesson plans, assessment tools, and teacher training, helping to ignite student engagement in learning by giving them hands-on experience in learning through physical and digital creation.
Early entry into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has also become a key play driver for both parents and kids. In India, where start-ups are playing a crucial role in fuelling the innovation wave in the country, there has been a rapid increase in start-ups focusing on various verticals including education. And we are seeing these start-ups tap into STEM education differently: Delhi-based start-up Smartivity is dedicated to the design and development of STEM toys while Robotix offers robotics education for kids through an interdisciplinary approach, where STEM teaching happens in an interesting and innovative manner.
In Australia, Japan, and many other markets, we are seeing the emergence of educational toys that teach kids how to code. Code Builder for Minecraft has been very popular as it allows educators and students to explore, create, and play in a Minecraft world. By partnering with familiar learn-to-code platforms like Tynker and Microsoft MakeCode, players can not only develop computational thinking but can also apply their creations across the curriculum. Another great example is KOOV in Japan, a modular robotic system that Sony released in February. Used in classrooms or at home, KOOV is a comprehensive solution for STEM education with everything needed to start building robots and make them move with code.
Whilst being primarily used for logistics, robots themselves are also beginning to penetrate the play and education markets. In China’s single-child families, they are being used as both caretakers and entertainment companions. The use of robot companions to look after kids when parents are busy, providing entertainment as well educational modules, was a category that did not exist two years ago, but is now a $20 billion USD industry. Using intelligent education robots with voice interaction to accompany each step of kids’ educational development has become quite popular — in the latest Double 11 Festival, toys like Xiaomi’s Mi Rabbit Story Machine and Alilo’s Fire Fire Rabbit both ranked in the top 10 bestseller list.
Using intelligent education robots with voice interaction to accompany each step of kids’ educational development has become quite popular in APAC.
The rapid technological advancement in many Asian markets is often driven by government policies and local tech players, which means that brands and organisations can strike up really interesting partnerships and co-creation initiatives to drive the education agenda for kids in their countries.
The Future of Play Is Boundless
The prospect of play has never been more exciting. As technology like augmented reality keeps creeping into everyday life, the realms of play are becoming limitless, with Pokémon Go being the first to break the gaming conventions at scale through the use of AR. In Japan, for example, one of the aquariums have used AR technology to create virtual penguins that guide you from the city to the aquarium on your screen. An easy extension of that application would be to use the same platform and technology to deliver educational content around the aquarium exhibits, therefore integrating play with not just navigation, but for educational purposes as well. In a similar fashion, the BalikSG AR app, which was launched in conjunction with the commemorative Singapore Bicentennial event, brought the country’s history to life along the Singapore River and showcased how technology-enabled play is able to transcend the conventional constraint of time and space.
As play grows into an all-encompassing lifestyle that transcends generations and spaces, what marketers can do is to take advantage of these digital and technology forces that are fueling this shift and inspire new ways for parents and kids to connect with each other. Toy makers and other kid-oriented brands should be leveraging mobile and social to bridge the virtual world to their physical toys or products with digital content and services. Brands that exist in the virtual world would also have plenty of opportunities to engage in play with their consumers in the real world. The digital-physical divide of play is breaking down, as the many examples in the APAC market have shown, and there are great opportunities for brands to come up with new products and services to reflect this new kind of boundless, lifestyle-oriented play.
The digital-physical divide of play is breaking down, as the many examples in the APAC market have shown, and there are great opportunities for brands to explore.
