?FILIPINOS can be the creators of the next ?Resident Evil.??

This is the dream by Jonathan de Luzuriaga, Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) executive director for industry affairs. De Luzuriaga, who also sits as managing director of outsourcing advisory firm Tholons, was referring to the now-legendary zombie video game franchise Resident Evil.

The Philippines, he says, is now in the early stages of building up its presence in the video game development business.

Several business process outsourcing (BPO) startups are now involved in offering select services to big video game names in countries like the United States, Korea and areas in Europe.

Services done here include cleaning up of motion capture animation and three-dimensional or 3D art?some of the hardest and most time-consuming tasks needed to create a sellable video game.

De Luzuriaga says game titles undergo several stages during development like preproduction, production and testing.

?These stagers cover processes such as artwork, development, animation, music scoring, motion capture and programming,? he says.

This presents an opportunity for local BPO firms, especially with no single video game company anywhere in the world having the capability to do every step of the process.

According to industry analyses, over 60 percent of game development and game services related budgets are going to be outsourced to service providers in Europe and Asia.

?Just as the country is tailor made for the BPO industry, the Philippines is teeming with talented graphic artists and IT professionals, not to mention gaming enthusiasts, making it an excellent choice for game development outsourcing,? De Luzuriaga says.

One of the local companies making a name for itself in this sector is MoAnima, a motion-capture and animation studio based in Makati.

?The industry giants in the US and Europe are becoming more and more aware of the talent there is in Asia, particularly the Philippines, and the studios here in the country are more than ready to be able to meet their demands,? MoAnima country manager Lyshiel Valencia says in a recent interview.

Right now, less than a thousand employees work in the local BPO space specializing in animation. This is out of over 500,000 employees, most of whom are working for call centers.

Valencia says gaming development can be one of the sectors that gives higher value to the country?s BPO sector.

She says as the local industry grows and expands to reflect and adapt the growth of the global gaming industry, homegrown studios are optimistic about their current and future prospects.

Valencia, who is also president of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, says local companies have also started to organize themselves to be able to attract more clients. While the local firms may not have the size or capacity to provide all the services involved in the game development process, banding together could provide clients with an end-to-end solution.

De Luzuriaga echoes this, saying that ?our advantage is our openness to collaborate.?

?If we can tell companies that they can have everything done here, then that?ll be a better value proposition than having each part of the process done in different locations around the world, which is what they are doing today,? he says.

Gaming is also unique among other sectors in the BPO space, he says, since it would not be very difficult to entice employees to work for video games.

?This is going to be an easy sell to potential employees. As soon as they find out that there are jobs like this?working on the latest video games?it won?t be hard to convince them to join these companies,? he says.