Day 3: 5.8.19
Today’s lecture focused on the history of Saigon’s development, it’s economy, and where it’s going in the future. The part that stood out to me the most was the SMART City Innovation Challenge, a call to create a comprehensive masterplan that can provide things that have always been important such as affordable housing, reduced traffic, and better healthcare as well as areas with potential like e-government. This is something that can be applied to more than just Vietnam and as an industrial engineering major, I believe it would be useful to study the improvements in the efficiency of a city that implements sections of the masterplan.
The language lesson was entertaining once again, for both my Vietnamese partner, Alex, who was trying all kinds of ways to teach me the correct pronunciation, and I, who was alternating between joyously succeeding and miserably failing, the notes I wrote next to each letter in the Vietnamese alphabet only carried me so far.
In the afternoon, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media, an art production studio and game developer that completes projects for a range of clients from local companies to global corporations including Microsoft, EA, and Sony. On the tour of the three floors that make up their office space, I took note of the layout. I never thought about what goes into developing a video game, but seeing each desk with one computer displaying a real life photo of a specific part of a vehicle and the other computer serving as the canvas for a 3D design gave me a new sense of appreciation after realizing how much time and effort goes into the details of each graphic. I also noticed the demographic was composed of mostly males but the female presence wasn’t insignificant by any means. The ages of the employees varied too, which was later explained as a way to keep the company relevant because of the mix of motivated young blood and knowledgeable veterans contributing to the end products.
Given that I didn’t think of Vietnam as an exporter of digital media, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Glass Egg’s remote location can be an obstacle when it comes to acquiring new clients. Even though they may not be the first option that pops into the minds of potential clients, Glass Egg enjoys other benefits such as less competition, which in turn makes it easier for them to work with the few competitors that are located in Vietnam and causes a higher rate of employee retention rate, although this may also be due to fact that they encourage their employees to play the newest releases in the company game room and have yoga classes three times a week.
As far as what’s in store for the future… Before today’s tour I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where the video game industry was headed, but Glass Egg predicts that the next breakthrough will be augmented reality because it has more applications ability to be utilized by other professions such as architects. Glass Egg specializes in vehicles, environment, and characters, so I could see mechanical engineers and environmental engineers utilizing their services but I could see outsourcing to other companies like them as an excellent way for civil engineers to upgrade their project designs.
P.S. I don’t think I could ever get tired of the breakfast buffet! I am considering making it a habit to eat rice and dumplings for breakfast at home, although unfortunately I doubt I could match the authenticity.
