Bringing Vietnamese culture into the game

Scene of the discussion session When Vietnamese quality inspires game creators. Photo: Thuy Trang

Within the framework of the Vietnam Game and Gift Culture Festival 2025 with the theme of Vietnamese Creativity, the discussion session When Vietnamese qualities inspire game creators recently took place at Ho Chi Minh City Book Street, delving into the journey of bringing traditional culture into game design, from aspirations, visions to idea generation and implementation.

Vietnamese cultural imprint

The discussion session opened up a space for the game start-up community, board game developers and cultural experts to exchange, share and find ways to nurture sustainable creativity from the roots of Vietnamese culture.

Emphasizing the importance of culture in products, Mr. Luu Trong Nhan, Founder of Chat Viet Explorians said: “When culture is realized through product types such as games or gifts, it will be closer to the public… We always believe that a product always has its own life. When a product is exposed to people and experienced by people, that product will have its own story.”

Only by originating from culture and applying culture, can Vietnamese games shape their identity and spread core values - intangible values that are difficult to measure through revenue figures. So what is the way for Vietnamese games to convey Vietnamese images, identities, and origins to the world ? Young people - Vietnamese game creators have shown their constant efforts in bringing the nation's cultural, historical, linguistic, customary, architectural, and religious values into games.

Mr. Nguyen Thien Toan, Founder of Ngu Hanh Games - a unit specializing in creating board games and bringing Vietnamese culture into games, said: The unit's achievements in recent years have been to bring Vietnamese culture to countries such as Japan, Korea, Hungary and many other countries in the world through games. From there, international friends know about the beautiful and rich country of Vietnam.

Talking about the opportunity to participate in creating game products with cultural elements, Mr. Toan shared: “Like many young people today, I also really like board games. After researching, we realized that Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia... already have board games about their country's culture. Meanwhile, at that time, if you searched about Vietnam on major websites in the world about board games, you would only see war and pain. At that time, we thought that Vietnamese culture is very beautiful, we must show it to the world. From there, we decided to establish a studio specializing in creating board games about Vietnamese culture."

Sang Den is a game product with a theme inspired by the traditional art of Hat Boi of Vietnam.

Mr. Michael Orion - Founder of Rolling Wizards Studio, creator of the game Sang Den, Thien Can Dia Chi said: Half of his family is Vietnamese, he and his wife agreed to let their children learn about Vietnamese culture but it was very difficult to access in the US, so he chose to teach his children Vietnamese culture through games. When he returned to Vietnam, he started producing games that incorporated traditional cultural elements and the products initially created attraction, urging him and his colleagues to continue researching and creating to bring Vietnamese culture to the world. To have game products that are not only attractive but also typical of Vietnamese culture, it is necessary to have in-depth research on culture, find out the characteristics of folk games, historical figures, traditional art forms...

In the game - products formed by the creative spirit of youth combined with traditional cultural values, will bring a lively and attractive cultural product, thereby connecting culture with the young generation and contributing to promoting Vietnamese culture.

Open direction for Vietnam's cultural industry

After 6 years of starting up, game products incorporating traditional cultural values of Ngu Hanh Games have appeared and been searched for on major board game websites.

The games are produced and distributed by Ngu Hanh Games.

“The success of these products is the door opened by the cultural “key” - the internal strength of each nation. That is when foreigners, after playing the game, have to exclaim, “I didn’t expect Vietnam to be so beautiful and attractive, I will come to Vietnam one day soon” - Mr. Nguyen Thien Toan excitedly shared.

Ngu Hanh Games representative gave an example: When reading Japanese comics, we can understand Japanese culture; watching American movies, we understand more about American popular culture. Those are characteristics, "personalities" and they will be conveyed through the way the creator makes the product. However, in Vietnam, not many creators have reached that height. Therefore, creators need to be more appreciated, freely put their own quality, Vietnamese quality into the product.

The successes of Vietnamese game creators and producers in their desire to bring Vietnamese culture to the world also show positive signals from this cultural industry. In Decision No. 1755/QD-TTg dated September 8, 2016 of the Prime Minister approving the Strategy for Development of Vietnam's Cultural Industries to 2020, with a vision to 2030, software and entertainment games - one of Vietnam's cultural industries - are targeted to become important service economic sectors, with clear development in quality and quantity. Thereby, contributing positively to economic growth and job creation through the production of more and more diverse, high-quality cultural products and services, meeting the needs of creativity, enjoyment, and cultural consumption of domestic and export people; contributing to promoting the image of the country and people of Vietnam.

Games are not just about watching but also about experiencing, so bringing culture into the game will create curiosity for users and lead and inspire them to actively learn about Vietnamese culture and Vietnamese qualities.
Mr. MICHAEL ORION, Founder of Rolling Wizards Studio, creator of the game Sang Den, Thien Can Dia Chi

From a purely consumer market, Vietnam has gradually formed a game creation ecosystem and is constantly growing and developing. This shows that the game industry has wide open development space. If we can take advantage of the creativity of young people combined with the national spirit, we will create unique cultural industrial products that are globally attractive and imbued with the Vietnamese soul.

Thuy Trang - Phuong Uyen

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/van-hoa/202509/dua-van-hoa-viet-vao-game-fb91628/