This gaming COO believes Asian games are ready to become the next K-pop

At 4Divinity, COO Tan Chor Yong is betting on the idea that Asian games can become the region’s next major cultural export — if the industry stops treating Asian IP as a niche proposition. The group traces its roots to Epicsoft Asia, a 17-year-old distribution company built on “bringing some of the West’s most premium gaming experiences to Asian consumers”, including titles such as Cyberpunk 2077.

More recently, 4Divinity has helped deliver top-tier Asian experiences, including co-publishing the physical retail versions of “Black Myth: Wukong”. But the ambition now runs in the other direction: to help Asian stories travel outwards.

Being based in Singapore, he says, “offers a strategic regional perspective”. From that position, 4Divinity was created as GCL Global Holdings’ publishing pillar, designed to evolve the business into one capable of developing and exporting original Asian intellectual properties.

The ambition is large because the opportunity is large. Tan wants 4Divinity to globally publish and develop premium game titles with “top-tier production values” that deliver “memorable, impactful experiences”.

Asian entertainment has already proved its global force through K-pop and C-dramas. Gaming, he believes, is ready for its own moment. That conviction, however, had to survive scepticism. For Tan, the hardest part of building in the industry came from “deep-rooted scepticism among investors”. Many doubted that Asian developers outside Japan could produce premium games for a global audience.

The economics did not help. High-end development projects require millions of dollars, take years to complete, and “recovery from failure is extremely difficult”. The market has started to shift. The success of China’s Black Myth: Wukong and Korea’s Stellar Blade has changed how investors look at Asian-developed premium games. Tan describes these titles as having “served as a catalyst to investors”, demonstrating the region’s capabilities.

Still, 4Divinity is not building its future on one spectacular gamble. It has developed a diversified portfolio to spread financial risk, while using AI technology and tools “to rapidly iterate on creative ideas and significantly reduce production turnaround times at every stage of development”. The team’s edge, Tan believes, comes from being “keen consumers of gaming and entertainment”.

That instinct can be seen in Showa American Story, an action-RPG that “serves as a love letter to 80s pop culture and B-movies”. The title has generated more than 10 million YouTube views, ranked number one on Bilibili, and amassed over 16 million impressions on its Steam store page.

There is also “The Defiant”, a World War II first-person shooter centred on “a rare, historically authentic perspective focused entirely on the Chinese resistance”, and “A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei”, a Wuxia-inspired action-RPG backed by Sony’s PlayStation China Hero Project.

Across these projects, Tan’s instinct is consistent: originality matters, but only when paired with discipline, patience, and long-term sustainability. That same preference for purposeful design also drew him to the all-new BMW iX3, of which he is among the first owners in Singapore.

For Tan, the appeal sits less in novelty and more in what the Neue Klasse direction represents: digitalisation, efficiency, and sustainability brought together through thoughtful innovation.

“The iX3 feels like progress that’s deliberate, not just following trends,” he says. “It moves forward while respecting what’s worked before, which reminds me a lot of the games industry.” It is an unexpectedly neat parallel.

“In gaming, the best technology is often invisible to the player; it simply enables smoother, more intuitive experiences,” he says. “The iX3 embodies that same philosophy.”

His definition of luxury has shifted accordingly. “I still appreciate performance and craftsmanship, but to me, modern luxury is really about how effortlessly something fits into your life,” he says. Electric mobility, in his view, brings “a new kind of refinement”, defined by quiet confidence, responsiveness, and ease.

That may be the clearest link between Tan’s work and his choice of car. Whether he is backing Asian IP or embracing electric mobility, he appears drawn to innovation that does not abandon its foundations in the name of reinvention. The future, in his view, needs confidence, coherence, and cultural conviction — and perhaps the courage to move before the rest of the market catches up.

Photography: Lawrence Teo
Art direction: Ashruddin Sani
Stylist: Dolphin Yeo
Grooming: Grego Oh, using Charlotte Tilbury and Revlon Professional Singapore