Convergence in the Flat World
Three symptoms of a converging world: there is ample band-width, worldwide, there are enough platforms, again, worldwide, and finally, there is interest in local folks to utilize applications freely available on the web to manage workflow remotely. Word, Outlook, Netmeeting, 3D Studio MAX and, especially, Google, allowed game developers to thrive in India (Friedman, 219). It started in simple things like medical records and tax returns. It's going to game production. Ultimately, and this is the interesting part, the focus is shifting back to India, to games for the Indian market, made by extremely competent engineers - Indian engineers - for the Indian market.
Let's have a little fun with future convergence, a pair of words I just made up. The computer I am working on was assembled in China from parts probably sourced in, at least, China, Taiwan, Japan, and the US. When I had a complaint, early on, it was handled by a call center in India. They were nice, they spoke may language, and I didn't have to raise my voice to get what I wanted.
Let's just suppose, however, that China wanted to, finally, absorb Taiwan (Friedman, 586). Are they likely to do that, given all the profit motives that exist for them to co-exist? What about the conflicts between China and India? Same story as China and Taiwan? How about the US and China? All these ties based on trade make it less likely that threats will turn ugly. What will really happen? Can't tell yet. Ultimately, politics may trump business and personal relations. The odds of this go down as long as we are all playing on a level playing field. Make the rules universal and everyone will follow the rules. That's the theory. Let's see how it plays out.
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat. A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007.