– Perfect World CEO Robert Xiao
The Chinese game industry still mainly produces games aimed at its own domestic market, but in the future, it will go global. The government would like to see it happen, and a prominent studio’s CEO is already laying plans to do it.
These insights come from two ChinaJoy reports on VentureBeat; one based on a talk given by government representative Song Jianxin (from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) and an interview with Perfect World CEO Robert Xiao.
“We should not merely emphasize the domestic market. We have to go out into international competition. Then we can have more opportunities to occupy the high land of the gaming industry in the world. Only by doing so can we promote Chinese games and Chinese culture to the globe. We should not merely visit the overseas market. We need to go further, and be involved in intellectual property collaboration and content creation,” Song said.
And in the interview with Xiao, the CEO explained how he’d go about building a truly global product: “We want to do global development. Say I have a Chinese cultural element. I’ll use a Japanese artist who understands this element to form it into characters. I’ll use American designers to build the storyline and design the interaction with the game. I’ll use technologists in China to create the servers and the engine. I’ll use the Chengdu team to mass-produce graphical assets. That all combines to form a true global project.”
So far, the biggest effect that the Chinese industry has had on the West is cash infusions: Alibaba investing in Kabam, or Tencent buying Riot and investing in Epic Games. For its part, Perfect World acquired Digital Extremes and Cryptic Studios.
Xiao also confirmed that Song’s speech does, in fact, represent an increased push from the Chinese government toward targeting the global market: “The government is doing a lot of surveys on the industry and encouraging the industry to move globally,” he said.
Both stories are worth reading if you want a bead on how the Chinese game industry operates now — and in the future.
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2015