KKMM committed to help develop digital creative content industry

The Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) remains committed to develop the digital creative content industry and to ensure that companies can sustain their business and recover quickly once the Movement Control Order (MCO) is lifted.

Its minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said KKMM is looking into providing dedicated support for the creative sectors under its supervision, specifically for those that have been particularly hard hit by the MCO.

"As an immediate measure, digital creative content companies can consider two ongoing programmes that may provide some relief, namely the Digital Content Grant (DCG) and Digital Content Creators Challenge (DC3) programmes," he said.

According to a statement from the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Saifuddin said this during a recent webinar that was organised by MDEC, which saw more than 100 participants, including leaders from the animation and video games sectors voicing out their current concerns.

MDEC said the DCG is designed to support local digital creative content companies in producing and commercialising their ideas to create a sustainable digital content ecosystem for job creation and market expansion, boost talent development, and generate Malaysian-owned intellectual properties.

It added that the DC3 is a platform that enables local creatives to hone their creativity and develop new concepts to accelerate the development and commercialisation of these ideas into world-class digital content.

MDEC's digital creative content vice-president Hasnul Hadi Samsudin said the animation and game industries need to reassess the current business models, adapt to the new normal, and collectively re-energise the digital creative content ecosystem post-MCO.

"Therefore, MDEC plans to initiate and encourage cross-collaborations between non-related industries that will nurture new growth tracks, as there are many upcoming opportunities in the new digital playgrounds, immersive content space and digital distribution platforms," he said.

The discussion highlighted that even if most studios are managing costs for now, many project timelines and attached talent resource planning have been revised to ensure suitable bandwidth is in place to deal with the new challenges.

MDEC said while immediate issues such as re-routing workflows to avoid production pipelines from being significantly impacted turned out to be easier to remedy, it was more critical to manage team morale, company cash-flow, and sourcing for new business pipelines.

--BERNAMA