泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] ChinaJoy or SaunaJoy

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

ChinaJoy or SaunaJoy

Recently, I went to China to attend ChinaJoy, China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference, held in Shanghai. The digital entertainment expo, which is comparable to the world's top three game shows, was an unforgettable large-scale international event. It was far different from others in exhibition spaces and audience figures.

 

Participation in the event was not that pleasant for me. I suffered from unusual heatwaves and muggy air as it is nicknamed "SaunaJoy", which made me lose weight of 2 Kilograms during the game show. In addition, I had to be the butt of joke among my company when I was mistaken for a Chinese by a flight attendant on the plane to Shanghai, someone in Shanghai Airport asked me if he could borrow my lighter in Chinese, and a stranger on the street of the largest city of China asked me the way in Chinese. Their deeds completely broke my hearts. (It seems that I need to seriously consider next visit.) Just cut the small talk and let's talk about ChinaJoy itself.

 

I think there are three key points in the game show.

To begin with, in spite of heavy opposition, when it comes to game-development ability, China has almost caught up with South Korea, its competitor. Some say that China is already more advanced than Korea, however, as I mentioned in the 37th column, I think that Korea is still better than China in terms of overall game development including resource optimization, screen direction, quality, etc. But it is obvious that the gap between the two countries has decreased.

 

Besides, contrary to my expectations, console games received greater focus. Instead of following the latest game-show trends where mobile games have taken the lead in the gaming industry worldwide, China has significantly expanded the release of console games. I guess that it's from the uniqueness of Chinese console-game market which was just opened last year. I expect that it would be sharply decreased if it doesn't gain popularity with internal players.

 

Lastly, there were many Virtual Reality (VR) games in the expo. VR-game development of South Korea is in its early stage. Nobody doubts that it would be the next hot thing in the gaming world, however, there hasn't been distinguished accomplishments yet. Participating ChinaJoy, I knew that Chinese gaming companies are getting more active in making VR games, which would lead it No.1 in the global VR gaming industry. It would seem to comparable to South Korea who stood at the top as the leader in a relatively short period time in the PC-gaming industry at the end of the 20th century based on its strong online infrastructure.

 

Of course, the three above doesn't explain all about ChinaJoy. But Korea would be beaten by China who is rapidly growing in the gaming industry unless we must strive to overcome this unstable situation. No time for domestic game makers to mull whether we should enter the Chinese market. We need to seriously ponder how we can handle Chinese gaming firms which will likely be available soon in Korea. After I visited Shanghai, I'm so sad since my sunburnt skin made me look from Chinese to Filipino.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui