/PRCWT/Beijing, December 18, 2023 - "Ingenuity creates joy and continues to maintain ingenuity, which is what gamers should do." On December 14, referring to the changes in the current game industry environment, Tan Yanfeng, vice president of Shengqu Games, said at the Industry Trends Forum of the 2023 China Game Industry Annual Conference. "As the external market environment continues to change, for a company or a team, it may need to constantly seek innovation and innovation, but from the perspective of research and development, it is more necessary to persevere."
Tan Yanfeng believes that if you see a hot market and want to be a follower, then the risk of opportunity cost and capital cost will be very high. In your field of expertise, higher quality, higher efficiency, and lower cost may be a way to persevere in the current market environment.
Talking about its experience in going overseas, Tan Yanfeng said that Shengqu Games, as one of the earliest game companies in China to expand overseas markets, has carried out game overseas business through a series of ways such as investment, mergers and acquisitions, and cooperation as early as the early stage of Internet development. For example, in 2004, Shengqu Games obtained a controlling stake in South Korea's Actoz soft, becoming the first domestic company to acquire an overseas listed game company. In 2010, Shengqu Games acquired Eyedentity Games, the developer of "Dragon Valley". In 2018, Shengqu Games invested in Kakao Games, a game subsidiary of South Korean mobile social giant Kakao. These experiences have laid a solid foundation for the company's many self-developed games to enter overseas markets. Now, in the face of increasingly competitive domestic market, while promoting self-developed games overseas, Shengqu Games is also continuing to cooperate with overseas CPs, establish cooperative relationships with overseas publishers and excellent platforms, and jointly create global IP products to explore more opportunities in overseas markets. Well-known game manufacturers including Bethesda Studio, KLab Co., Ltd., and KONAMI are
Tan Yanfeng believes that Chinese game products, especially mobile games, are highly competitive globally in terms of user acquisition and commercialization. According to the data in the "2023 China Game Industry Report", the revenue of Chinese games in overseas markets has exceeded 100 billion yuan for four consecutive years. Facing the highly competitive overseas market, domestic game manufacturers have paid more and more attention to exploring new ways to go overseas in recent years. They have continuously tried to break cultural barriers with games and skillfully integrate traditional Chinese culture. They have created many games with a perfect world view and profound cultural heritage, which resonate with global players. Chinese games have become a powerful medium for telling Chinese stories and spreading Chinese voices.
"The rise of a great power will inevitably bring about the rise of culture. In the past, when it came to cultural products from various countries going overseas, everyone would think of European and American movies, Japanese anime, and Korean TV dramas. In the future, I believe that Chinese games will also become the business card of the rise of Chinese culture, and games with traditional Chinese cultural themes may become a major development trend of global games." Referring to the new direction of the industry going overseas in the future, Tan Yanfeng believes that based on the logic of cultural rise, games containing traditional Chinese culture will have great competitiveness in the future global market.
But when opening up more emerging markets overseas, it is not a simple product export. Tan Yanfeng emphasized, "When making products go overseas, we must pay attention to some localized preliminary preparations, especially the changes in laws and regulations and art styles for various overseas regions." In recent years, overseas product compliance requirements have undergone major changes, not only in mature markets such as Europe, America, but also in emerging markets such as South East Asia. Tan Yanfeng said that in the past, games going overseas to South East Asia were relatively Buddhist in terms of compliance, but from the second half of 2022, including Indonesia and Singapore, there will be more requirements for mobile game compliance. As more domestic games go overseas to Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and other regions, the entire South East Asia may be strengthened in this area in the future. Therefore, the way of looking at the entire South East Asia as a whole needs to be changed, and the content of future compliance work will become more targeted.
