YouMeiTI 有媒体

These are notes from Kippo (who blogs as Beijing Man), on the China Online Gaming Industry Conference. His blog has always been one of my favorites and he just so happened to recently post a really cool walk through on his life history (I feel like he's already my internet friend after reading it).
So back to the conference, his main conclusion was that each panel agreed mobile gaming is where the focus should be. Yet there was no discussion on "how gaming teams and communities get created, their lifecycle, or about "side" communication. But panelists agreed that money lies in the community, in serving the community." Thanks Kippo for the insider update and your childhood picture rocks! -tricia

COMMENTS BY PANELISTS

Comments by SINA:

• Launched onlgame this year: "complexity is increasing and 3D is becoming a norm"
• China's ONLgaming industry is too crowded, 150200 games, consolidation has begun, and quality will raise
• Game developers out China don't understand situation in China even if you explain
• 40% of casual game players are women, at lunch time the highest usage, not just for one hour, they play 3 hours
• At casual game friends meet friends, and game sells accessories and players comment each others "game items"
• Onlgames development cycle is shifting from 2436 months towards 816 months, which then gets piratecopied in 4 months...
• about payment methods:

• best would be payments by mobile, but it's not allowed
• prepaid by calling 0800 or 0900 number is common
• prepaid card is possible but women don't want to go shops to buy them

Comments by Yahoo

• Casual Games are successful; in USA women 30 to 35 spent 25USD per pop
• Expect casual games to be next big thing
• Casual games are multiplayer, deeper than RPGs, and have community: money lies in the community
• Strategy is to launch the game for PC and mobile same time
• Gaming business traditionally is in no. of players, no. of page views, and time spent

How to bring OnlGame product to China market?

• Product an online game
• Distribution via Internet Cafes: this is critical, how to get your product installed? You must verify situation every week!
• Internet Cafes may use stolen games, pirate servers, because they get paid by playtime
• Chinese way towards pirate gaming, once found: "pay me a little bit, not need it all, lets work together..."
• Marketing to be done via the key gaming channels /Internet
• Focus on existing game's service level: it must be good to attract gamers' friends to join, word of mouth

Good in Chinese Programmers

• In China, SCALE is needed, its expensive if games goes down if too many concurrent users
• Chinese have an advantage to understand the realities of scale (vs. Koreans and others)

Problems with Chinese Programmers

• Have no project management
• Chinese see a new feature and want to produce same but be cheaper
• Have unrealistic expectations about getting rich and fast
• Have no confidence on their own ideas

Regulations

• China Mobile CMCC, Ministry of Information Industry MII, Ministry of Culture MoC ... and finally Police for pirates...
• Ministry of Culture controls the onlgames content, their model for control is expected to expand over mobile content, too
• In bigger organizations there are senior people from government, everywhere, this is Chinese tradition
• Policy risks exist in China

Other

• Rapid growth experienced with MMORPGs and next big thing for China will be casual games
• If you license an onlgame you need to have own studio to make changes to it: culturalization, localization, scale
• PC games' piracy is a problem; good cardgame gets copied overnight
• Gametalents are hard to find in China "If you are one, come talk to me!"
• Choosing the right partner: partner evaluations as usual, but especially verify integrity, trust, transparency
• Koreasourced games also need constant changes; flipflop to Korea and back, much work and cost
• Robotic Players, BOTs, based on protocol sniffing, play while human player sleeps or is at work: trouble with flatrated onlgame's "balance"
• Playing online games can be compared to TV viewing; a program with lots of new episodes
• Community is KEY is MONEY; Shanda is successful because it manages to keep it's base of users

Above: Reallife game at Beijing Grab Island, May 2005: "Where are we?"

Panel Members

• Bill Bishop, CEO, Red Mushroom
• Geoff Graber, General Manager, Yahoo! Games
• Hurst Lin, COO, SINA Corporation, Nasdaq "SINA"
• John Lee, Executive Director, Turbine Games
• Michael A. Fong, Regional Manager, China, Vivendi Universal Games
• Yuzhu Xiong, Consultant, Piper Jaffra
• Moderated by Paul Waide, Founding Editor, Pacific Epoch

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