Game development: Expanding the Philippine call center business

The past few years have been favorable for the Philippine call center sector of the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry as the growth of other industries and markets outside the Philippines resulted to continuous expansions in the voice service sector.

The healthcare information management (HIM) sect has been one of those that rubbed off its growth to BPO companies. Last year, the HIM segment brought 66% more revenues to the call center outsourcing industry after generating $433 million revenues in 2012. One more sub-sect that is rooted to lead the industry is the multilingual voice service sector, which is currently booming through the aid of investors eyeing the country as the headquarters for their Asian operations.

Another booming market that could also dominate the local BPO industry along with the two mentioned sectors is the game development business.

Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) President Jose Mari Mercado is positive about this as well, citing the Filipino workforce’s creativity, interest in gaming, and programming skills as the secrets to game-dev’s imminent local outsourcing dominance.

“This year, the big thing is healthcare but games development will be next two years down the road,” Mercado said.

Right now, about 30 game development companies outsource to the Philippines and employ roughly 3,500 people. By 2019, the employee count is projected to reach 10,000 while the annual revenue is estimated by Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) to average at $500 million.

GDAP sees an even brighter future for the game development sector in the next 10 years as the association believes that the $50 million revenues that the sect generated in 2012 could spike to $1 billion while it expands to the 20,000-personnel margin.

However, the estimations are for the voice-based customer service roles of the Philippine call center industry. The country may supply the talents needed for the creative aspects of game development, but it still lacks technical expertise to produce high caliber games the way top gaming hubs like the US and Korea do.

The Philippines will instead focus on the customer support aspect of the gaming market, providing voice-based services to gamers in need of maintenance, gameplay, and troubleshooting assistance.

“It is like ‘call a friend’ thing where players can get outside help to win a game,” said BPAP President Mercado.

Open Access BPO grew from a telemarketing startup to a multifaceted outsourcing firm that provides its clients voice and non-voice solutions including web development and rich media development. Visit our website or join us on Google+ to partner with us.