Bringing Western Games to China: The Difficulties and Challenges

Gary Huang

International BD Director

NetEase

Content

• About Chinese Market

• The Difficulties and Challenges

• Successful Example

About Chinese Market

PART ONE

Why China ?!

Mobile Game Users

Smartphone Users

4% 29%

2010

About 35 Million

Mobile Game Users

2015

About 374 Million

Mobile Game Users

Fantasy Westward Journey (梦幻西游)

Mobile Version of NetEase’s Flagship PC Game

No.1 on Chinese iOS Top Grossing Charts

No.4 on App Annie ‘s Worldwide Top Apps by Revenue

PCU: 2 Million

PART TWOBringing Western Games to China:

The Difficulties and Challenges

Culture: Art & Story

Art: Cute (big head), Chinese Story: Westward Journey

(Classical Chinese literature)

Art: Cartoon, Exaggerating, Lively Story: no particular

storyline, virtual world

Art: Cute, leaning to realism Story: Western

magical world

Technology

Competition: The Best Only

With fierce competition, only the innovative and

well polished games can win over the most of games

The Difficulties and Challenges ?

User Experience

CommunityMonetization

Innovative gameplay

• Market is saturated with copies

• Market trends move too rapidly

• Famous IP + AAA quality no longer enough to stand out

Game should make financial sense

Opportunity for large

scale expansion Big

potential audience

Well-integrated

monetization

Not competing with

established market leaders

Monetization

Free to play Premium

-Few are applying this mode, no premium games on Android. -Since Apple adjusted the minimum paying unit to 1RMB, many games use the mode to get on chart.

-Highly matured, Best way to gross -Thousands of systems are developed to pay while play. -For china particularly, recharge via text message is the best practice to increase grossing on carrier’s app shop (Android)

-Half baked model, only a few genres (SLG, casual games, social games)are applying.

-Large amount of games are applying, especially hardcore/offline games.

China

West

Community

Growing System

• Grow rapidly in the early stage

• The need leads to interactive and pay

Social System

• Friends system

• Marriage system

• Chat/Message

• Mentor

PVP

• Competition will leads players to have more interaction and pay

Guild System

• Good way to arouse player’s emotion change, to get connections with other players

PART THREESuccessful Example

World Soccer Collection S

NetEase first mobile game licensed from a foreign developer (Konami)

• Top sports game since launch

• Top 11 on grossing chart

• Keep stable ranking position for the past two years

Localization

Social

User

Interface

Daily Task

Newbie guide

Leader-

board

Full optimization of Newbie guide

Full optimization of Newbie guide

Ver. 1.2.0

World Challenge Match

Players challenging the top global teams can become “+” players

New commentators

Added commentary by famous commentators: “funny style” and “passionate style”

Ver. 1.1.0

Leaderboard

(Match ranking)

Every month is one game season. Players can challenge opponents any time and find excitement from climbing up and down the match rankings!

New commentators

New commentary by famous commentators: “sweet style”, “Shanghai style” and “Cantonese style”

Ver. 3.1.0Add Galaxy match play

2 teams compete and according to both sides' victory or defeat, they get corresponding points reward.

Special AwardRandomly get some real teams' badges, uniform vouchers and boundary breaking bonds.

Gary Huang

International BD Director

NetEase

gzgaryhuang@corp.netease.com