Peering into China
(Visited 8400 times) Game talk
Mar 032006
A sample of a report (PDF) on the Chinese market for online gaming was released a few days ago, and I just found it via the fascinating Virtual China blog.
Among the key statements in the report:
- $900m in revenues predicted in 2006
- There are over 160 games being operated in total; 83 operators and 153 games being operated locally.
- Locally developed games are taking the lead (exceptions being WoW and O2Jam, a game I think I have mentioned before)
- Broadband can now be had for $10/month in most cities, causing a shift away from net cafes and towards home play.
- The free-play, item sales model is limited to less popular or aging games; the classic business model is the most likely to continue to dominate, because the free play model has lower stickiness and revenue.
- 39.6m online gamers, though a huge number of them are playing free casual games.
- This represents 33.2% of the Chinese Internet audience.
- But the paying audience for games in the current market is likely capped. Future growth will come from new Internet users and females.
- Chinese developers, because of the emphasis on lower-tech, simpler games, can produce an MMORPG for as little as 10m yuan (which is only around $1.25m — literally somewhere between 1/10th and 1/100th of the cost in the Western markets).
- But most of the games suck.
- This has caused rapid turnover even among hits — a game will reach 100,000 peak concurrent, then fade, but be replaced in a relatively short time.
- So there is now an actual strategy of infrequent A games and B-caliber “filler” games that are expected to peak and churn.
- The B games are also the “fallback” games: as soon as the A game starts charging, players retreat back to the free games.
- The B games often have regional followings, because local governments provide support, and because of local marketing incentives.
- The Warcraft RTSes trained Chinese players in Western mythology.
- Western MMOGs have too many roleplaying elements and not enough hack ‘n’ slash for the Chinese market.
- Because of the cafe infrastructure that trained gamers in China, they are used to not having save games. Cafes would wipe the save games off their machines, and often would not even install all the missions in a campaign. The result is a strong session-based mentality that carries over into the quick-reward play of hack n slash games. This also means that there is no significant RPG segment in China.
- This is a big part of WoW’s popularity in China: you can play it like Diablo.
- There is no large untapped FPS/RTS market than can be tapped to convert to online games — they already converted, that’s who’s playing now.
- WoW has hit a half million concurrent, but there’s literally dozens of games that break 100,000 concurrent, and the top game has hit over 700,000 concurrent.
12 Responses to “Peering into China”
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Wait, with a few exceptions western MMOGs are ALL hack ‘n’ slash. I don’t understand… do the Chinese just want endless waves of enemies to come at their characters, with no healing and no travel from place to place?
Awesome info. I’ll check it out.
Do their market figures for revenues include ad revenues around the free online casual games? That’s a pretty significant segment, so if they don’t include it, the market’s actually bigger (end users paying with time that is converted into advertiser dollars)
You need to try a few of the Asian games. 🙂 They’re much more direct about it. You start your character, walk out of town, and find a field of shambling monsters. Then you start clicking.
Kim, maybe the full report does, but I only read the free sample. Maybe you can spend some of your MS budget on it. 😉
The author seems somewhat confused as to what the word roleplay means. From my (limited) research in the field the chinese players dont mind roleplaying, but their mmorpg’s dont worry alot about story and lore.
Wait.. how is this different from western MMPs? 😉
[…] Though I feel like I’m starting to disagree with some of Mr. Koster’s views on what exactly MMOGs are, he never fails to open up the door to an interesting discussion. I’ve had his Peering into China post open in Firefox since last week, and damned if I don’t look at those numbers and go ‘guhhh’. A few thoughts on the realities of MMO Gaming on the other side of the world after the cut. […]
[…] Speaking of China, Raph has a list of differences between the Chinese market and our own. One thing I don’t see in his list is any differences in content localization. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what those differences are. […]
In western MMPs, you start out clicking in a field of rabbits or wolf pups. You don’t get to see any shambling monsters until you’ve played for at least half an hour.
I spoke with a Chinease young man getting his EE degree at my school – by chance about a month ago – he suggested that the biggest barrier for an MMO to be succesful in the Chinease market is the language/interface localization issues. I think a big reason WoW is so succesful over there is that its interface is almost entirely logographic and icon-based, and chat threads are server-based, so Mandarin character sting adjustment can be treated unilaterally. Of course, the nature of the interaface ties in to the Diablo-esque gameplay, but notice that the more complex games like Eve and Second Life haven’t caught on there. This isn’t because the Chinease don’t like social gameplay, but because the langauge/interface barrier is too steep for them to interact meaningfully with worlds hinging on player co-operation. Linden and whatever company runs Eve could probably open servers for the Chinease market, but in Second Life’s case it’d require a whole new content community, and I’m not sure if Eve is one cohesive platform or server distributed like WoW. In the prior case that would mean tackling the real-time translation problem so Chinease players could usefully collaborate with foriegners.
[…] Here’s some info on gaming in China : https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/03/peering-into-china/ And I’m pretty shocked at some of the responses this thread has gotten. From the looks of it, some people think people in China, India and Brazil almost live in slums. Guess what? They don’t Some of the richest people in the world live in these countries- it’s just that they don’t make it on to world’s richest lists because most of these people don’t declare their wealth, and one reason is to evade tax. Tax evasion is so common there that it affects average earning reports as well. Try looking up some pictures of places like Chong Qing, Delhi, Bangalore, Qing Dao or Shen Zhen. You’ll see anything but slums. The ignorance some people on this board possess never ceases to amaze me. I think companies don’t do well there not because people can’t afford to buy, but because people would rather buy it pirated at a lower cost. I’d say it’s a big problem in most of Asia. Here’s an analogy: you want to buy a bottle of ABC brand water and one store sells it for 10 dollars while another sells it for 5 dollars. You obviously go to the store that sells it for 5. In these countries, people just see pirated goods as a cheaper way of getting their movies and games. People barely understand the concept of copyright and sometimes those who buy originals are thought of as stupid when they could easily get the “same thing” for less. It’s more of an issue of ignorance than wealth. And anyway, companies are trying to and have succeeded in getting past the price issue by making their products cheaper in those countries. Then there’s also the fact that Japanese goods are being boycotted in some East Asian countries. It’s one of the reasons The 360 did well in Korea and it will one of the main reasons the Playstation 3 won’t do well in China. […]
[…] of China, Raph has a list of differences between the Chinese market and our own. One thing I don’t see in his list is any differences in content localization. And to be honest, […]