MEET THE CREATIVE
Making waves abroad
Vietnam has experienced an incredible renaissance in both culture and technology in recent years. On the App Store, talented Vietnamese creators have been winning over the global audience with innovative apps and games, while on TikTok, the country’s rising stars have been racking up hits with millions of remixes.
We sat down with some of those creative powerhouses to learn how they started out and what they have been doing to make waves abroad.
Out-of-the-Topebox thinking
A veteran of the Vietnamese games industry, Thái Thanh Liêm founded his game studio Topebox in 2012 after stints at Gameloft and VNG. Since then, Topebox has been making hits such as the infinite runner series Sky Dancer and the rogue-lite shooter Gun & Dungeons, with the latter being picked by renowned Swiss publisher Miniclip for worldwide release.
Liêm cites the introduction of iPhone and its open developer ecosystem as the opportunity that Vietnamese developers needed to put their creations on the map. And he believes that Topebox’s development philosophy is key to its international success.
“Through touchscreen and hand gestures, mobile gaming provides a universal language beyond text, so that’s what we go for when thinking about user experience,” he says.
Originality is something else that he focuses on. And to aspiring developers, he offers this advice: “Innovative concepts and extraordinary art direction are the only ways to make your games stand out in today’s landscapes. Also, look out for groundbreaking hardware platforms so you can be one of the pioneers.”
A sight to See Tình
Who could have imagined that a phrase from a Vietnamese folk song would become a massive global hit on TikTok? That’s what happened with Hoàng Thùy Linh’s bubbly love song “See Tình” and its super catchy “tình tang tang tính” chorus. There are now more than 2 million TikTok videos created using different versions of the song, including a Tanzanian dance video and a South Korean volleyball match.
It’s important for Vietnamese music to express its own uniqueness, while still being on trend with the rest of the world.
– Hoàng Thùy Linh, singer of “See Tình”
Even though Linh had already envisioned “See Tình” to be the hero of her 2022 album Link, the song’s international success was still a surprise. She loves how “See Tình” and the dance moves from its music video are reinterpreted on TikTok, and is amazed to see even K-pop superstars like PSY, Blackpink and Super Junior performing the dance.
When picturing the future of Vietnamese music, Linh says: “Our music is getting more attention from the world, and I think this is a result of how global music is coming together and how Vietnamese artists are leveraging our originality. It’s important for Vietnamese music to express its own uniqueness, while still being on trend with the rest of the world.”
Hitting the right CollaNote
With millions of users across the globe, Nguyễn Quốc Huy’s note-taking app CollaNote has been a hit beyond expectations. It all started during the pandemic in Germany, where Huy was studying. As all academic activities moved online, Huy and his classmates turned to iPad for their schoolwork, using shared notes for collaborative projects.
That’s how the idea for CollaNote was born, and the app soon took root among student communities in both Germany and Vietnam. Once the user count went past 10,000, Huy began localising the app’s product page for other countries. Now more than 90 per cent of CollaNote users are from outside of Vietnam, and the original one-man team has grown to include more than a dozen members.
“I love the culture onion model, which says that every culture has multiple layers to be peeled back for understanding,” Huy says. “My seven years abroad helped open my mind and peel back those cultural layers, making a direct impact on the app’s UI/UX design, as well as the development of new features and content.”
To budding app developers, he says: “Don’t be afraid to build up a team, because more people can do more and better work. Pay more attention to localisation, and make sure that your app can support the 10 most popular languages with a properly translated product page.”