The international conference “New Directions in the Development of Creative and Media Industries” will be held in Hong Kong on June 7-8, 2013. This event is not only a platform for scholars’ discussion on the past, present, and future of the creative and media industries but also one of the programs for celebrating the 50th Golden Jubilee of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Among all creative industries, games are one of the mainstream entertainment form consumed by people from different age groups. Games have been integrated into the daily lives of citizens as mainstream form of digital entertainment, a site of education, and even as a profession through different communication technological devices. Despite games’ popularity and social significance, games were misconceived as marginal and frivolous. In the present, games are in fact one of the few most dominant entertainment forms in developed economies, one of the most lucrative creative industries, and the most profitable IT application. Investigation of the development of game industries and markets in different countries are therefore useful for HK. HK’s game industries urgently need the help of cultural policies, business models, regulation, and industry norms to propel them into the Chinese and Asian markets. In view of the urgent need for relevant information and policies, this conference aims to conduct a comprehensive study of the game industries in HK and China with an international comparative perspective. Game industries, game texts, new user and their experience, cultural policy will be discussed in the conference as an example of creative industries.
Besides the newly emerging creative industries, media industries also respond to the changing technology, market and audience taste by evolving themselves into new cultural and media forms. The new business model and forms of media industries will also be discussed in the conference.
As a conference for creative industries, apart from helping to achieving practical economic goals, this conference will make an important theoretical contribution to the fields of media studies, globalization studies, creative and game studies and policy. In this conference the data and findings in games studies, creative and media industries fields will be shared among scholars. We will focus on comparative analyses of the cultural policies, regulations, creative clustering, industrial development strategies, consumption practices, and game markets of the countries that have collected data on. This conference will be significant not merely for the game industries but also for Hong Kong’s other creative and media industries like films, pop music, design, fashion, and advertising that are facing keen competition from Asian competitors.
This will be a 2-day event that consists of 8 sessions including a round-table session, which will draw leading academics from around the world.