Ken Ho-Ming Law gets his game on in new film, ‘Good Game’

Co-written by Lilly He, June Zhong, and Ken Ho-Ming Law—who also worked as the film’s action choreographer and stepped in front of the camera as Octo’s game avatar Golden Arm—Good Game premiered at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival, in Montreal, Canada. The film is highly entertaining and balances multiple tones, storylines and visual elements, blending the real world and the game world.

Following Good Game’s North American premiere screening, Law spoke with JoySauce about integrating the world of Hong Kong e-sports into an action film, developing its comedic elements and fun stunt sequences, and being inspired to depict senior citizens’ struggles with dementia and how gaming can be healing.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Carolyn Hinds: Ken, during the post-screening Q&A, you mentioned you were inspired to write this film when you saw an article about senior citizens engaged in gaming. I love that Good Game is focused on senior citizens and those who are considered to be too old to compete.

But before we discuss the senior team members, talk to me about the idea of professional gamers being considered too old to compete when they're in their 20s, which is still quite young.
Ken Ho-Ming Law: This is actually shocking to me because when I watch traditional professional sports, most athletes retire maybe at 35, or closer to 40. For example some MMA fighters compete until 42 for such a physically demanding sport. But for a sport that is about gaming, just clicking on a mouse and a keyboard, you retire by 28? What? [Laughs.] 

They start really young when they're 15, but that's still a really short athletic expectancy. This is based on science, because the reaction time for this sport is a lot harder than doing anything else.

You may just point and click, but that reaction time has to be precise, and when you’re watching your monitor five or six things are all happening at once. Each person has to watch what they’re doing, what’s happening with their teammates, where their stats are, and predict where the game is going. You have to think three or four steps ahead in a split second, and this is all happening rapidly. So that's why it's so demanding for gamers to be young and fresh, so your eyes can follow, and then you don't even have to look at the keyboard. It’s all instinctive.

CH: The players have to consider not only gaming as their job, they have to think about winning constantly to prove their worth to their sponsors. So I want to talk about that a bit because that's how the story really starts. With Bond realizing, “I am dispensable. I’m worth nothing to these people in dollar signs.”
KL: That's something I wanted to touch on in the film because in life we encounter a lot of problems, and half of them will be related to money. Like with Tai, his Internet cafe is declining in popularity. It's running out of customers, and he asks his landlord to cut down on the rent to help. 

With Bond, he started gaming because he liked it. He enjoyed gaming with his friends, but then it became his career, and once that happens, once you let your career dictate your passion, then it's really dangerous.

Same as me. Initially, I wanted to make movies because I enjoy acting, I like martial arts, and I love watching martial arts movies. But when I entered the industry, I was hit with heartbreak, and thought “Wow. This isn’t what it seemed like.” But there’s this moment when you ask yourself how passionate you are about what you’re doing. We have to keep our heads clear and try to find out why we initially wanted to do this thing that’s important to us.

CH: In Asia, people practically live in Internet cafes, but the thing with Tai, is that his cafe is basically empty all of the time, and the reason is the economy is bad. Speak a bit about how important it was for you to have that in the film, as it's a constant theme throughout the film. Is that something that's happening all across Hong Kong?
KL: Well, I think the decline of Internet cafes in Hong Kong is heavily influenced in part by people playing games on their cell phones. We no longer need to play games as we did in the past, like I did as a kid. Mobile gaming is so easy now. Convenient.

CH: Can you talk about working with Lily and June, and figuring out the balance of the action, drama, with the heartfelt situations, like with Auntie Lam and Octo, the comedy, and how your own acting and stunts experience were a benefit for a film with all of these different elements?
KL: Well, first, with Andrew Lam Mung-Chun there, you don't have to worry about comedy. He's going to take it up and improvise a lot, and we had to cut back on that actually. It's like, “Andrew, this moment is really serious. Tone down on your improvisation.” Because when he improvs, the other actors have to improv as well.

Lily and June, they actually provided a really solid and complete all-around inspiring underdog story with no problem, and for the comedy, the three of us and Dickson had to make sure the script stayed relevant to the times, so we went online. And this is funny to say because I'm 42, but it's really hard for me to try to mingle with the young people these days, and we tried to be in touch with what the youths say and be as grounded as we could.

For the action, I wanted to create something different from normal action movies. Yes, I can go hard to the wall, but I don't think that tone fits with this film because you're fighting inside the game, so there should be no blood.

CH: You guys did something different (from most Asian game dramas) by bringing your avatars out of the game, and I thought it was great not only as a narrative choice, but a visual choice, like in the scene where Bond is sitting down in the corner and he sees Solo in his yellow jacket, and they’re talking to each other.

He's essentially talking to himself by talking to his avatar. So please talk about that because I think it’s a unique way to separate this film from others in the e-sport and game genre.
KL: As a main character, that's how determined he is. He sees his avatar with him. Nobody else sees it. That's how much Bond is into gaming.

As we were writing the script, at one point the in-game avatars came out of the computers and they started wearing normal clothes, and the main characters played by Man-Chung, Will, and Yanny, were in the game for a split second, and in the game, you see Will fighting, he's drawing the pistol like Anson is, and he's doing his thing, and I really liked that scene, but we were afraid it was gonna confuse the audience too much, throw them off. So we took it out. What we really wanted to show about the gamers is that for them, life is a game and there’s something important about remembering to have fun with life.

CH: I agree. My last question has to do with the representation of dementia and how doing things like gaming is used for treating dementia and cognitive conditions. I really love that you included that.

With the character of Auntie Lam, the dementia has already developed. But she's interested in gaming because it makes her happy. It keeps her spirits up, and keeps her active and through it, she has a family and a community now. You show that just because the elderly have dementia, they aren’t expendable.
KL: My grandmother, she’s passed already, she had Alzheimer's, and I can't believe how much worse it can get in a short period of time. I didn't know this back then, but I should have known. She didn’t do gaming, but she was into planting flowers and stuff like that, and it actually slowed down her dementia. But once we started taking her plants away for space, because Hong Kong's houses are so small, she just went downhill fast.

Then I read a lot of articles about how gaming will help stimulate your brain because you have to multitask doing this and that, and it will really prevent or at least slow down Alzheimer's developing by having to train your cognitive functions.

I want people to help senior citizens by letting them play some games. Let them have fun, encourage them. There are a few senior game teams now, one in Japan of ladies over 70, and another I think in Thailand. These seniors are having so much fun gaming with young people. They don't care when they lose, but imagine if they compete in the world championship and they come this close to beating them! That's why I included this storyline. So, now I hope that, maybe not just through gaming, more seniors can find a hobby that works to slow down the progress of dementia.