Ever since the descending lines of marching Space Invaders inspired a new kind of recreation in the early 1980s, the worldwide computer games industry has experienced enormous growth. With the three big names of seventh generation consoles - Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 - battling it out for market share, the pressure to keep people playing with more complex and challenging games is high.
As a major consumer of all forms of computer games, Hong Kong is less known for its computer game development industry because of a shortage of the right talent and investors. Of the three main sectors in today's computer games development, such as computer-based online games, mobile games and proprietary console-based games, Hong Kong developers tend to focus on online and mobile games with smaller teams and lower budgets.
The more lucrative, high-profile console-based game development has largely taken place in Japan, Europe and the United States, with local developers left out in the cold.
'There aren't any local developers making games for the mass market and this is partly because of the issue of piracy,' said James Wong Kai-on, co-founder and game designer at Playpen Studios, a local computer game developer with 11 staff.
'The market cannot support itself. Developers have to make games subscription based and this is not an ideal situation. Knowing how much work goes into these things, it is unbelievable to think of someone sitting in a room burning copy after copy and selling them.'
Mr Wong's development team, based in the digital media hub at Hong Kong Cyberport, is one of a small number of local start-ups hoping to beat the big teams, fight piracy and crack the console game development market.