PROPERTY OF THE MIT PRESS FOR PROOFREADING, INDEXING, AND PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY Pr Wolf—Video Games Around the World INDONESIA Inaya Rakhmani and Hikmat Darmawan This chapter provides a general overview of the video game industry and practices in Indonesia. The term “video game” is often used to mean arcade games, console games, computer games, and online games that have become popular over the past twenty years. 1 However, we have found through interviews and literature reviews that console and online games have had the most significant economic and cultural implications in Indonesia, a country of 240 million citizens, 130 million of whom live on the island of Java, where physical and information infrastructure are significantly more developed compared to the rest of the country. 2 With 45 million Internet users, it is estimated that there are seven to ten million game users in Indone- sia and that between the years 2010 and 2012, this number increased by 33% each year (Ika 2011a; Firman 2010). If the trend continues, by 2015 Indonesian video gamers will amount to approximately 30 million. In a country with a monthly GDP per capita of 2.5 million Indonesian rupiahs (approximately USD $278, as of 2012) (Wibowo and Pratomo 2012), the average gamer spends approximately 100,000 to 1 million Indonesian rupiahs per day (approximately USD $11 to $111) during the holiday break (the average four-week school break between mid-June and mid-July) (Ito 2009), with an average of two to ten hours per week throughout the year (Kusumadewi 2009). Among urban Indonesian youth, console games and online games have replaced both more traditional, physical games and television viewing (Barliana 2004, 4). A recent study on video game playing habits revealed that 95% of its respondents enjoy playing, spending an average of eight hours per day doing so (Heryadi 2008, 411). Video games have not only gradually become a promising industry, but have had complex social and cul- tural impacts on their users. We discuss these implications throughout this chapter and have tried to describe how video games provide a space for critical expression and the shaping of new communities. Despite Indo- nesian scholars’ growing interest in the study of video game culture, researchers have failed to address the limitations of each other’s findings, due to general disorganization in the Indonesian academy. This study is among the first attempts to fill the void by providing a general overview and description of video game devel- opment in Indonesia. By borrowing from political economy and cultural studies approaches, we attempt to provide a descriptive portrayal of Indonesia’s video game industry and practice.