As Singapore attempts to move past COVID-19 and into the “new normal”, support for new forms of employment will be needed. The “new normal” will see a permanent formation of digital workers such as remote employees, streamers, new media content creators, and even VTubers who use virtual avatars to represent themselves in their videos.
However, one key concern with current efforts is the industry-fixation among policymakers. Current policies make very rigid assumptions about how work in very strictly defined industries should be done.
Even though many digital and innovation policies have been introduced by the Government, digital employment is not a feature of current policies.
For instance, the Industrial Transformation Maps (ITMs) mapped out 23 industries and its vision for how these industries will develop with the introduction of technology. However, the definitions of these industries are defined by today’s standards with little room to imagine how those 23 industries might look like 10 to 20 years’ time.
It may be hard to fathom that just 5 years ago digital workers like livestreamers could use virtual avatars instead of their real faces to represent themselves in their videos, with streams hosted on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. Entertainment content can range from gaming playthroughs, interactions with fans, and reviews of risqué content. Today, the popularity of VTubers like Melody (VShojo), Gawr Gura (hololive EN) and Inugami Korone (hololive) has soared with YouTube reporting 1.5 billion views per month. Financially, VTubers are doing well, a prime example being Kiryu Coco from hololive who has earned more than US$1 million since her debut in December 2019.
Central to VTuber content is the creation of avatars and advancements in facial animation, where motion tracking technology has facilitated the widespread use of face rigs. Facial rigging is the process of creating animation controls for a facial model. Initially, the costs of such technologies were highly prohibitive. Now, the costs of animating avatars and technology in general have sunk considerably. Today, professional gig platforms like Fiverr offer fully animated 2D avatars for only USD$500. It is very easy to become a digital worker today.
While there are very few VTubers in Singapore, it has also become far easier to financially sustain a digital working career from any part of the world. YouTube’s “superchats” or donations, Twitch’s “subs” and Patreon have allowed and normalised individuals to directly support their favourite VTubers through digital payments on these platforms. Meanwhile, “simping”¬ — a catch-all term used to describe a very wide range of activities including consuming content, creating fan arts, running fan pages on social media, to spending exorbitant sums of money to support their favourite content creator, also normalised the act of financially supporting digital workers.
The financial success and popularity of VTubers today is not the concerted effort by national or company policies to make the industry work. Instead, VTubers took advantage of the various policies formed independently to create a niche for themselves. For example, YouTube’s content policies and algorithms shaped VTuber content over time. In 2016 when VTubers first started proper, content was heavily scripted. Over time, as algorithms favoured less scripted, more humour-oriented, and slightly risqué content, VTubers evolved as well. VTubers’ popularity skyrocketed when nationally imposed lockdowns were enforced, allowing digital workers the opportunity to build up fan bases and utilise the monetisation systems within online platforms to make a living.
The successful adaption by VTubers highlights the ecosystem developed by various national and company policies. Whether by accident or not, governments and companies have created an environment where entrepreneurship and natural innovation can thrive. Ecosystem development creates economic dynamism where innovation can occur and spur further economic development. Early online policies from the mid-2000s have allowed new media content creators and platforms to thrive, and VTubers became one of many natural innovations as a result. Today, VTubers are also seeding new potential in new and old industries such as the gaming, VR, and music industries.
With fast evolving trends moving full steam ahead, it is unsurprising that the current direct industry-specific approach by the Singapore Government has resulted in less-than-desired outcomes.
A 2020 study by private-sector economists with data from the Conference Board Total Economy Database and Department of Statistics have shown steady declines in total factor productivity (TFP) growth since the 1990s despite the introduction of numerous digital and innovation policies. Declining TFP is concerning as this is a measure of Singapore’s ability to extract the most output from combining labour, capital, technology, and management ability. In addition, few naturally occurring innovations have sprung from industries in recent years, with much of “innovations” being directed by predetermined outcomes.
The future also poses challenges in the form of “new normal” companies on top of “new normal” digital employees. These companies are not restrained by traditional industry definitions, using technology to easily branch out into multiple sectors. Virtually all major tech companies today and even budding ones cannot be defined by a singular industry.
For example, Grab cannot be defined as a transportation, food delivery or banking company. At the same time, many remote workers can work for multiple companies across multiple industries. As such, industry-fixated policies have little effect on these “new normal” companies and workers.
The potential benefits of ecosystem-oriented digital and innovation policies can be seen elsewhere in Singapore. Connect@Changi, first opened in February 2021, is an example of such policies. The facility allows overseas business travellers to stay and conduct meetings without the need to serve quarantine on arrival. Rather than providing financial support to companies in the aviation industry and directing the use of such support, the government and companies instead created a platform on which airlines and other companies in the aviation industry can tap. It is up to the likes of Singapore Airlines and Changi Airport Group to innovate and come up with new strategies to tap on Connect@Changi.
The future calls for a brave new approach to digital and innovation policies. As VTubers, like other new forms of remote work, redefine experiences by blurring the lines between the digital and physical worlds, it may be far more effective if policies focus on creating ecosystems that facilitate natural innovation rather than on industries whose definitions might change in the coming years. VTubers might simply be a case of “cute anime girls doing cute things” today but perhaps tomorrow, entire tribes of VTubers might help co-create the future of online experiences.
Shazly Zain is Research Assistant at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore.
Top photo from Freepik.