作者：Simon Carless

我刚从熙熙攘攘的上海回来，公司在当地设立办公室处理游戏开发者大会中国展相关事宜。今年11月，展会将在壮观宏伟的中苏友好大厦（游戏邦注：即现在的上海展览中心）举行。

随着我们依计划逐渐在市场推广产品，意外发现西方游戏市场与中国游戏间的隔阂逐渐增大。

团队向我简要介绍像腾讯、盛大、网易、畅游和巨人等公司今年发布的大型网游，其中许多游戏我从未听说过，如《鹿鼎记》和《倩女幽魂Online》。如若获得极大的成功，这些游戏的同时在线玩家可能达到100至200万。

中国文化部调查表明，2010年整个市场产值增长至50亿美元，涨幅26%。由于数字销售的低成本化，顶级公司的利润率非常高。

我们在上海也同许多中国市场游戏业行家交谈过，以下某些为人一致认可的2011年发展趋势让我对这个市场的理解更为透彻。

网易《梦幻西游》（from news.pm173.com）

1、由于存在盗版威胁，非微交易形式游戏的市场份额几乎为零。如果要让网游成功进驻中国市场，最佳方式仍然是与腾讯或盛大之类的大公司合作。

2、在这种情况下，发行商（游戏客服方）或平台（类似Facebook的社交游戏平台）获得的盈利抽成（游戏邦注：50%-70%间甚至更多）高得令人难以置信。中国大型上市公司知道他们较受用户关注，引领着这股高额盈利抽成的潮流。照此看来，Facebook Credits的30%分成相对来说似乎甚为合理！

3、有趣的是，即便已经有了相当高的盈利抽成，某些情况下你依然需要自行设立网游和社交网络游戏服务器。外国公司的境遇可能与上述情况不同，而且代理商会与你配合来翻译游戏。

4、小型工作室成功崛起确已成为趋势，尤其是那些制作带有微交易并由大型发行商以不同方式推广的网页多人游戏的公司。比如，第七大道的游戏《弹弹堂》凭借其《百战天虫》式的玩法轰动市场。

5、对于中国大型游戏公司而言，顶级网游的寿命似乎相当长，超过3年是很正常的现象。2010年，网易的《梦幻西游》同时在线人数再创新高，达到260万人，而这款网游发布时间是2004年。

6、尽管如此，各网游竞争激烈，许多主流游戏相差无几。因而，找出其中的差异化是很难的事。我被告知只有6款于2010年发布的新网游（游戏邦注：2010年发布网游总数超过200款）同时在线用户超过10万，其中大多数不是上述五大网游公司的产品。

7、结果，中国大型游戏发行商逐渐开始表示他们会改善与开发商间的关系，为第三方游戏提供更高的盈利比例。换句话说，他们正意识到其他独立公司也有机会突出重围获得成功，比如《弹弹堂》的开发商。

8、就西方游戏对市场的渗透力而言，韩国游戏在中国非常流行。但除了《魔兽世界》（目前由网易代理）外，美国或欧洲的其他微交易游戏仍未崭露头角。腾讯深信Riot的《League Of Legends》很可能在中国获得成功，因而耗资将近5亿美元买下了这家公司，买卖是否合算仍未可知。

9、有趣的是，《植物大战僵尸》和《愤怒的小鸟》等许多西方专属游戏近来在中国十分流行。当然，因为iPhone游戏盗版的横行，它们根本没有产生利润。PopCap对此的解决方案是尝试以其他方式来盈利，包括与人人网合作开发社交游戏。Android在中国的迅速崛起可能会让手机游戏微交易量有所增长，但道路依然艰辛。

从总体上说，中国市场依然很神秘，让人琢磨不透。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

China: The Game Changer

Simon Carless

I’ve just returned from an ever-bustling Shanghai, where my company has an office for its work on the Game Developers Conference China show, which is being held this November in the utterly cool-looking Sino-Soviet Friendship Center (pictured, left).

As we’ve been working on what we plan to do to expand our products in the market, one massive takeaway has been an ever-larger gulf in visibility and intelligence between the Western game market and the Chinese game biz.

When our team briefed me on the big online game launches for this year from market-leaders like Tencent, Shanda, NetEase, ChangYou and Giant, for example, I hadn’t even _heard_ of many of the titles in question. Duke Of Mount Deer? A Chinese Ghost Story Online? And these are games that may reach 1-2 million PCUs (simultaneous players) if extremely successful.

In fact, the market as a whole grew 26% in 2010 to about $5 billion, according to Chinese Ministry Of Culture research – and at super-high profit margins for the top companies, thanks to the low cost of digital distribution.

Having also spoken to a number of game industry insiders on the Chinese market when we visited Shanghai, here’s some received trends for 2011 that have made me understand the market a little better. (And yes, YMMV, please feel free to disagree or amplify in comments!):

- If you’re creating an online game in China – and let’s not forget, there’s basically zero market for non-microtransaction based games thanks to piracy – the best way to a ‘guaranteed’ hit is still to get picked up by a massive company like Tencent or Shanda.

- However, in those circumstances, a surprisingly high percentage of revenue (as much as 50-70% or even more!) often goes to the publisher (for client-based games) or the platform (for Facebook-like social game systems like RenRen.com or Kaixin), because the large Chinese public companies understand that they ‘own’ the eyeballs, and have already set a precedent for getting higher revenue share. Suddenly, Facebook Credits’ 30% seems relatively reasonable!

- Interestingly, even though you’re paying out a rather high percentage, in many cases, you still have to host your own servers for both online AND social network games, in _addition_ to letting the publisher/operator take a high percentage of revenue. (This may be different if you’re a foreign company and the operator translates the game in co-op with you, naturally.)

- There’s definitely a trend around the rise of successful smaller studios, especially those with browser-based multiplayer games that have microtransactions and can be promoted in alternative ways to big publisher contracts. For example, 7th Road’s Dan Dan Tang (semi-NSFW English language review) has been a big hit with its Worms-like gameplay.

- For the largest Chinese game companies, it appears that there’s a very long life for the top online games, way exceeding the 3 years that used to be the norm. In fact, NetEase’s Fantasy Westward Journey hit an all-time high of 2.6 million _simultaneous_ players in 2010, despite having launched all the way back in 2004.

- Nonetheless, there’s lots of competition for users, and many of the major games look the same. So differentiation is very difficult. Notably, I was told that only 6 new Chinese online game titles in 2010 (from a total of more than 200 major launches) have reached more than 100,000 simultaneous users – and most of those are not from the ‘big 5’ companies.

- As a result, bigger Chinese game publishers/distributors are starting to indicate that they will become more developer-friendly and give higher percentages of revenues to third-party games. In other words, they are recognizing the success that can sometimes come from independent or external firms with greater opportunities to break out, such as Dan Dan Tang’s creators.

- In terms of Western penetration, I think it’s fair to say that Korean titles are very popular in China, but other than World Of Warcraft (now with NetEase), no other microtransaction-based games from the U.S. or Europe have made a major impact. Tencent clearly believes that Riot’s League Of Legends has a big chance to succeed in China, hence buying the company at a valuation close to $500 million, but the proof will be in the pudding – it’s certainly the ‘most-likely’ in terms of gamer excitement.

- Ironically, there _are_ a couple of Western franchises – Plants Vs. Zombies and Angry Birds – that have been massive recent hits in China. But of course, they have made basically no money, since it’s all been on the back of massive iPhone game pirating. (It’s incredibly easy to get your iPhone jailbroken and either download or go to a local store to get free games in China.) PopCap’s solution is to try to monetize in other ways, including a RenRen.com social adaptation. And the rapid rise of Android in China may help with mobile game microtransaction growth. But it’s still rough.

Hopefully these insights have helped. But overall, the story of ‘you don’t know/understand enough about China’ is a bit of an over-repeated one. We’ll all learn more about the Chinese market if there’s more translated material in both directions, and that’s something Gamasutra is looking strongly into doing. (We have some good leads, but if you’re a China-based journalist with strong writing and translating skills, contact us.)

In the meantime, there are a couple of decent sources for Chinese game news in English that I’ve located. Specifically, the boutique research form Pacific Epoch, which once did a China column for Gamasutra, has good-quality basic news on the public-traded companies – although it lacks a working RSS feed.

In addition, Chinese game site 178.com has an English-specific site with a _lot_ of news on the Chinese game biz with decentish translations. Definitely worth checking out, although some of it – blog post and game announcement translations -is intriguing, some of it – specific game update info – is decidedly less so.

(Oh, and on a slightly different but related Asian game news note, the veteran Korean game business website ThisIsGame.com has an English-language website called TIG Global which has some good coverage of South Korea’s also intriguing game biz.) (Source: Gamasutra)