美国的社交游戏公司能在中国获得本土化的机会吗？这个问题估计是每一家境外公司在进入中国之前最为严肃的一个评估问题。据福布斯的报道，之前在国外相当盛行的任天堂的WII、索尼娱乐的playstation以及微软的Xbox事实上并没有一款在中国获得了成功。

Zynga-Logo

更多时候，因为用户习惯和政策因素，中国是海外产品仿制者大行其道的天下。

中国在线游戏盛行的时间始于2002年盛大网络代理韩国传奇游戏，盛大于2004年成功上市并成为在线游戏的巨头。盛大的成功很多因素在于中国用户习惯在线游戏，这其中有价格因素，高昂的游戏设备可能让更多的玩家被迫放弃。而国内的山寨本土化也可能使及其致命的一个因素，以近期的团购为例，国内大大小小的团购网站不计其数，这个时候他们的鼻祖Groupon反倒失去了在中国获得成功的机会了。

盛大游戏

很多人觉得zynga（收购XPD公司，并已经创立了北京办公室）看起来很像盛大网络，唯一不同的是zynga是发迹于北美的一家社交游戏开发公司。

这个时候我们不禁要问，社交游戏能成功侵蚀传统的游戏市场吗？还有更多的游戏开发和发行商能复制zynga的成功模式吗？社交游戏在手机平台上究竟能流行到什么程度？

In contrast to the U.S., online games have been popular in China since 2002 when Shanda Online Entertainment popularized the South Korean fantasy game title “Legend” in China. Almost single-handedly, that title made Shanda the single most successful IPO in 2004. Later, Shanda used its IPO cash to buy other studios and titles, becoming the single largest gaming network in the world.

A large reason for the success of online games in China was because consoles such as Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s xBox were never popular in China. A combination of high console prices, fear of game piracy on the part of publishers and government policy opened up an opportunity for online gaming.

In the U.S., Zynga has grown just as fast as Shanda, seemingly coming out of nowhere. Like Shanda, it is becoming a network too, leveraging the popularity of Farmville among many social game players. One could argue that Zynga is like Shanda, except it is starting from the U.S. market.

Groupon has leveraged the popularity of group buying, an activity which has long been popular in China since at least 2004. In China, group buying is called tuangou, and was an early popular use of the Internet for organizing. In China, the authorities have been wary of uses of the Internet which allow people to organize, but organizing for commercial purposes, such as group buying, are considered harmless, and thus are not obstructed. So effective was the tuangou movement that some retailers first sought to reject volume tuangou purchases of white goods and autos, but all eventually caved in, with some eventually setting up group purchasing departments to specially serve tuangou buyers. Now, they are a natural part of the Chinese retail landscape.

So, it is doubly ironic that Groupon’s success in the U.S. has set off a flurry of Chinese startups who copy the Groupon model in China. It makes one wonder…

As gaming and group buying become more popular in the U.S., some trends to watch are:

* Will social gaming eat into the popularity of console game titles and their publishers’ revenue?

* Will more game publishers move into social game publishing, seeking to duplicate Zynga’s success?

* How popular will social gaming become on the Android and Apple iPhone mobile platforms?

* As social games take off, will display advertising revenues fall, maybe even to China levels? (In China, online game revenues have always been higher than display advertising revenue.)

* If social gaming becomes popular, will in-game advertising ever take off? (In-game advertising has been a promise for years, but has never taken off.)