Jakarta, June 23, 2025 — Minister of Creative Economy, Teuku Riefky Harsya, welcomed Mayor of Surakarta, Respati Ardi, and representatives of the Surakarta Game Developer community (Surgadeva) at Autograph Tower, Jakarta, on Monday, June 23, 2025. The meeting discussed potential collaboration, particularly in increasing local income and creating high-quality jobs, as part of an effort to position the creative economy as a new engine of national growth, starting at the regional level.
Minister Teuku Riefky emphasized the importance of establishing a regional Creative Economy Office to optimize the development of the creative economy at the local level.
“By establishing a dedicated Creative Economy Office, the local government can approach creative economy players the same way they would approach business people. If it is managed properly, creative economy players can grow to professional levels. Besides that, existing industry associations already working with the ministry can have their own regional management and contribute directly to local governments,” said Minister Teuku Riefky.
The minister also explained the Ministry’s role as an accelerator for the creative economy players to grow sustainably.
“We focus our training programs based on participants curated by local governments. We then identify which areas to upscale—be it commercialization, promotion, or national and global networking. Ideally, Solo can play a strategic role in this acceleration process—as a key partner of the Ministry,” said Minister Reifky.
Mayor of Surakarta, Respati Ardi, welcomed the Ministry’s collaborative spirit, noting that stronger synergy with the central government could help address Solo’s challenge of limited high-quality job creations.
“We have many creative talents in Solo. But we don’t want the label ‘creative’ to be just a formality. We want our people to be truly employed in this sector,” said Mayor Respati.
Public Relations Officer of Surgadeva, Arif Setiawan, shared their vision for accelerating local game development talents through collaboration with the Ministry.
“Our game industry has great potential. Surgadeva already has over 200 members, 10 established studios, and 10 market-ready IPs. However, skilled talent in this field remains very limited. That’s why we want to collaborate with the Ministry to create a game academy with a final project based in Solo. We already have the human resources prepared,” said Arif.
Surgadeva is a national game studio community focused on developing IPs in both the gaming and culinary sectors. One of its flagship IPs, Epic Conquest, currently ranks second among Indonesian mobile games with over 12 million downloads.
“Moving forward, we will direct this initiative to the relevant directorates to explore how we can support the next steps. The goal is to maximize the impact of upcoming programs, increasing public participation and attracting more visitors and tourists,” concluded Minister Teuku Riefky.
Also present at the meeting were Deputy for Digital and Technology Creativity, Muhammad Neil El Himam, and Director for Game, Luat S.P. Sihombing.
Kiagoos Irvan Faisal
Acting Head of Bureau for Communication
Ministry of Creative Economy/Creative Economy Agency
