On October 27th, 2021, Tsinghua University and Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB) of Chile successfully held an online seminar on“China-Latin America Dialogue Video Games: Projections towards the 21st Century”.The seminar was organized by Tsinghua Latin America Center, Tsinghua SIGS-TENCENT Interactive Media Design and Technology Center, Tsinghua SEM Research Center for Interactive Technology Industry, the Digital Game Design Major of UNAB, Center for Latin America Studies on China of UNAB and Campus Creative of UNAB. Experts, scholars, and representatives from outstanding companies in the field of video games from China and Latin America met together online and exchanged their views on the current development and prospects of the interactive media technology industry in China and Latin America.

Zhang Chuanjie, Vice Dean of Shenzhen International Graduate School, delivered the opening remarks for the event. He said that in recent years, the technology industry represented by the interactive media technology has developed rapidly, and universities around the world have set up interactive media-related disciplines, making a breakthrough in interdisciplinary education by combining university education with industrial development. He hoped that through this dialogue with Latin American counterparts, both sides could share development goals and visions of the interactive media discipline, and jointly promote the exchange and cooperation among the industry, academia, and research, to lay down a solid foundation for future international cooperation and contribute to the cultivation of interactive media professionals as well as the development of the interactive technology industry.

The seminar was divided into two parts: academic exchange and industry discussion. In the academic exchange session, Fang Ke, lecturer at Shenzhen International Graduate School introduced the Interactive Media Design and Technology Center (IMDT) and the master´s program of professional interactive media design. In May 2019, Shenzhen International Graduate School together with Tencent created the Interactive Media Design and Technology Center with a focus on the interactive media industry to cultivate postgraduate professionals and jointly develop the most cutting-edge technology and social applications, while also actively explore new model of collaboration between government, enterprises, and universities. In April 2020, the IMDT Center collaborated with the game division of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and created a professional Master program in interactive media design, combining the strengths of Tsinghua and Tencent, with the goal of training leaders in interactive media projects and cultivating well-rounded talents.

Alejandro Erramún, professor and academic coordinator of animation and video games discipline from ORT University in Uruguay, shared the curriculum structure and the student capacity-building program at the undergraduate level. He said that in the future, the their university will actively work further with other universities, markets, human resource management companies and labor market to develop more industry-academia-research linkage.

Pablo Ortuzar, professor, and head of the video game design program at UNAB, introduced the establishment and the status of the video game design discipline at UNAB. He mentioned that UNAB is the largest private university in Chile, and the creative campus is one of the most important faculties of the university, in which the video game design discipline was set up. For talent cultivation, Ortuzar said that UNAB attaches great importance to the mechanism of originality and hoped that the students would show better originality and ability when designing game systems.

In the industry session, Xia Lin, Vice President of Tencent Games and Dean of the Institute of Tencent Games, introduced the current development status and trends of China´s game industry, as well as Tencent's own development. She mentioned that the total number of game players around the world will reach 3 billion in 2021, representing an increase of 5.3% over last year. Among them, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than half of the total number of players, becoming the main driver of growth in the global game market. The overseas revenue of domestic online games doubled from four years ago to $8.468 billion, reflecting go-global trend of Chinese games.

“Latin America has a highly developed game industry. It is a very important region for us to develop and cooperate.” Xia Lin emphasized, "Games are no longer just entertainment, they have become an emerging way of socializing and a new tool. As this diversified feature is widely recognized and accepted by the public, the game industry will embrace a new scenario and there will be more space for cooperation between industry, academia, and research.”

In addition, Ignacio Baldini, representative of Epic Games in Latin America, Chris Vásquez, producer of Video Games Chile, Álvaro Azofra, co-founder of Ironhide Game Studio and professor at ORT University in Uruguay, Alaia Barboza, coordinator of Latam Video Games Federation and co-founder of Pincer Games, and representatives from other Latin American companies shared their production achievements, game ideas and marketing promotion approach related to the video games by showing short videos and pictures, and also discussed the development of the industry as well as model of cooperation between industry, academia and research.

As to closing remarks, Li Xiu, director of the department of Informatics and head of the Interactive Media Design and Technology Program at Shenzhen International Graduate School, said,“this exchange gave us and our Latin American counterparts a chance to learn more about each other in terms of industry-academia-research, video game development and interactive media. We welcome more Latin American students to join our program”.

Chen Taotao, director of Tsinghua Latin America Center, positively affirmed the significance of the seminar, and said, “I am very pleased to see that Tsinghua University's industry-academia-research mechanism is also well reflected in this emerging industry. As one of the five overseas bases of Tsinghua University and as a bridge and platform to promote cooperation between China and Latin America, our Center will continue to support the future cooperation between China and Latin America in the field of interactive media and game industry”.

Fernando Reyes Matta, director of the Center for Latin American Studies on China and former Chilean Ambassador to China, said that this dialogue between experts, scholars and business representatives from China and Latin America hlaid a solid foundation for future cooperation in the field of culture and digital technology.

The seminar was co-chaired by Zhang Jiayin, director of Tsinghua SEM Research Center for Interactive Technology Industry, and Fernando Reyes Matta.