WHY doesn’t Singapore have its Google, Facebook or World of Warcraft (WoW) yet?
And doesn’t this mean that the Government’s efforts – and the millions poured into the fledging sector - over the last five years have failed?
That’s not an unusual comment, and one my colleagues and myself have all heard many times over the last couple of years.
I’ve found myself nodding my head to this familiar refrain – frequently actually.
Well, it’s true that nothing remotely like those billion-dollar behemoths of the digital media industry has come out of Singapore.
Let's be fair though: nothing remotely resembling Goldman Sachs, Apple and Vodafone have surfaced here.
We do have DBS, SingTel.
And of course, Singapore Airlines.
As a Singaporean, I have to say I’m pretty proud of those icons.
In the interactive digital media space, we have some Singapore and Singapore-linked firms like Razer and TQ Global making a splash.
They might not have the instant brand-recognition of a Goldman Sachs or Apple (yet), but they are certainly getting there.
If you don’t kill Orcs, you might not know who Razer is.
Ask a hardcore gamer though, and he just might lift up his glowing mouse emblazoned with Razer’s menacing green rattler logo in between bouts of Orc-genocide.
Similarly, unless you visited the Shanghai World Expo, you might not know what TQ Global does.
Well, ask the thousands who queued up – some reportedly for hours - for a chance to burn rubber in TQ Global’s 3D racing game, which is set in downtown Singapore.
Would Razer and TQ Global make it?
Will they become a mega-digital media triumph?
I don’t know. (And any pundit who tells you yes is as likely to be wrong as the legion of experts who lined up to crow about the inevitability of Yahoo and MySpace’s triumph)
I’m certainly hoping they do.
If they do, it is more than a feather in Singapore’s cap.
It means jobs. Good, well-paying jobs.
And Singapore needs these jobs, because our traditional strengths – logistics, accessibility, stability - are all under siege from countries like China and Vietnam.
So, I wish our fledging interactive digital media sector well – and I hope you do too.
Read the Saturday Special Report here