Text/Nine Lotus Treasure Lantern & Electric Teaching

From the beginning of the TGS exhibition to the end of the National Day holiday, Grape Jun has really spent enough time in Tokyo.

I have only one impression: I flew for four or five hours, and then I woke up and went back to China?

We can use some examples to illustrate the influence of Chinese games in the Japan market: such as the "Egg Boy Party" commercial on the big screen on the streets of Shibuya, the "Back to the Future: 1999" stand in Shinjuku street shops, the "Genshin" variety show on TV, the "Genshin" crossover event in KFC stores, and the Chinese second-hand tour merchandise sold in second-hand stores in Akihabara. Chinese games seem to be integrating into the lives of Japan players in all aspects.

Of course, there is also this TGS - an interesting little detail, in this exhibition, in addition to some multinational game companies, products from different overseas countries or regions, most of them have exclusive exhibition areas, such as Korea Pavilion, Hong Kong Pavilion, etc., but there is almost no such exhibition area in Chinese mainland.

This is not that TGS deliberately embarrasses Chinese manufacturers, but that there are too many domestic products. As the largest and largest edition of TGS in history, there were 985 exhibitors from 44 countries, and about 120 from China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), making it the country with the largest number of overseas exhibitors.

Not only that, but these products are heavyweight enough. Often, the exhibition area of a domestic game is equivalent to the level of an entire museum in some other countries or regions. If I really brought together products from China, I am afraid that I would be able to secure several TGS venues, and if I were a local audience, I would probably be deeply uneasy.

But even so, it seems that there are still many people who do not believe that Chinese products can succeed in the Japan market, and under our previous article, there are also people who leave a message saying: Japan people will be keen on our games, how can I believe it?

Indeed, all of the above can only show that domestic products are powerful enough in terms of marketing, so what is the response of players? Let me put it this way: everyone who attended this edition of the show will be impressed by the aisle between Tencent's Level Infinite booth and the "Rising Tide" booth. There were so many players parked in front of these two booths that it would take several minutes just to pass through them.

And it's not just these two Chinese booths that are buzzing enough, the other Chinese game booths are also crazy. The reaction of these players really made me realize what kind of influence Chinese games have in the international market.

01

How popular are Chinese games?

The trial will take a whole day

Let's briefly talk about a few products as examples.

First of all, the two "door gods" who blocked me: "Singing Tide" and Tencent's Level Infinite booth.

"Singing Tide" is really high-profile. Before we even entered, we had already seen the model of the boss "Burning Rider" outside the venue, and inside the venue, they also raised the tall character seedling balloon, for fear that you would not see the location of the booth. There are also enough players of Narushio in Japan, and whenever you pass by the booth, there are a large number of players participating in the event.

What impressed me the most was the dialogue with the voice actors, where the crowd directly occupied half of the aisle - the other half of the aisle was blocked by the audience of Tencent Level Infinite next door. At that point in time, Kim Hyung-tae, CEO of Shift Up, and Yoo Hyung-seok, the producer of "NIKKE: Goddess of Victory", were also holding an event, and I was "forced" to watch it for a while.

Opposite Tencent Level Infinite brought a variety of products this time, but obviously, the main course is still the second game "NIKKE", which shines in the Japanese and Korean markets.

There may be many people who think that "NIKKE" is a pure Korean game. But Tencent's involvement in the game is not low: not only do they take on all the publishing work of the game, but they also provide a lot of technical support for the game on the development side. In the early days of game development, Tencent not only sent people to participate in the design of guns, economic cycles, levels, skill strategies, etc., but even helped develop the PC version of the game.

Not only the players had fun, but even Kim Hyung-tae and Yoo Hyung-seok were a little too excited by the atmosphere of the scene. When the two appeared, the already lively Level Infinite booth directly doubled the crowd, and Yoo Hyung-seok also showed a hot dance in front of many players.

If the popularity of these two game booths is due to the fact that the game has been launched and has enough fans, then some new national game products have proved their appeal to Japan players through the trial team.

For example, Eagle Point, which brought Ark of Tomorrow: The End, and Boum, told me that on the morning of Player Day (September 28), all the trial tickets for the whole day had been sold.

Another example is the Xishanju "Limit Machine" that we reported a few days ago, I counted it on the spot, and they brought about 40 trial devices, but even so, when there were the most people, it took 3 and a half hours to try "Limit Machine". For these players in line, they are almost queuing with the consciousness of "I don't want to watch anything else today, but I want to play this game".

There are two new domestic shooting games, and the trial crowd is also eye-catching. In my stereotype, Japan players may be more accustomed to playing games with controllers and less interested in shooters, but the scale of player participation in the trial is still greater than I expected.

One is "Calabichu" by iDreamSky. In fact, Calabichu was the first game we saw after we came to Makuhari, where TGS was held. Their huge advertisements were posted directly on the floor of the seaside Makuhari train station. Due to the large number of people trying to play the game, Calabichu temporarily suspended the queue of players to avoid causing the venue to be overcrowded.

Another shooter that subverted my stereotype was Fate Trigger: The Novita. As we have previously reported, the game was developed by Tencent's wholly-owned subsidiary, Salos, and was first revealed in the middle of last month. As a "two-dimensional chicken", the game also attracted a large number of people who wanted to try it out at the scene. In the PV video played on the big screen, every time a new character appears on the stage to show his image and skills, it can attract some viewers who can't help but shout.

Continuing to walk into the venue, we saw that Perfect World took out its new product "Alien Ring" that it had just exposed.

I really didn't expect that it had only been more than two months since the first exposure, and they had already come up with a version that could be tried on the spot. Needless to say, the scale of the game's trial is needless to say, and a large number of local and overseas KOLs from Japan have come to visit. While I was waiting for the trial, more KOLs were attracted by the game and approached the booth with long guns and short guns.

When I was visiting the exhibition, people often passed by me, and while looking at the booths of these domestic games, they expressed their amazement and questions in Chinese/Japanese/English, "Whose game is this, so powerful?" So I couldn't help but ask the players from all over the world who passed by - which company in China it came from and what kind of story it has.

It's also humorous: I looked at their expressions of amazement, and I couldn't help but feel an inexplicable sense of pride even though I wasn't the developer of the game.

02

The next test,

It's the love of the game

In the past few days in Tokyo, there are two things that have touched me the most.

One is that Chinese games frequently appear in exhibitions and various downtown areas. Whether I went to G-STAR in Korea last year, or we went to Cologne, Germany and TGS in Japan this year, it is already obvious that the reputation of Chinese games is taking shape overseas.

Going overseas has been the main theme in recent years, but at a time when the Chinese market has become a monster house, it may need to be taken more seriously. For the future of Chinese games, no matter how big or small, from the early stage of the project to think more with an international perspective, it may bring more opportunities to the product.

In the past two years, it seems that it is becoming more and more difficult for the Chinese market to get out of a blockbuster game, and even if there is a blockbuster new game on the market, it seems that it is no longer as easy to break into the top ten and top five of the best-selling list as before.

For us who are accustomed to leapfrog progress, some people may think that the domestic products in the past two years are not good enough. But when you stand in the TGS pavilion and look at the products of countries around the world, the progress of Chinese games is still the fastest. To put it mildly, when Chinese games are put side by side with the top Japanese and European and American manufacturers, you will find that those overseas products are "nothing more than that".

The other thing is about the future of the gaming industry.

In the booth layout of this TGS, it is worth noting: when the crowd poured into the venue, the first booths that greeted them were neither well-known domestic manufacturers in Japan, nor overseas cutting-edge domestic games, but dozens of universities.

Among them are game colleges in Japan, and there are also some universities with game majors. At these booths, a variety of student works were on display. They may be immature, but they all look like them, and the students are very active in inviting industry insiders and players from all over the world to try their games.

This year, TGS's slogan is to the effect of "Play and be the first in the world". But those who often do things that are ahead of the world are some stunned young people. The reason why Chinese games are so soaring is also closely related to the young temperament of the industry. When we communicated with local producers in Korea last year, they expressed their admiration for the "do it or not" spirit of Chinese game companies.

However, when the market stage of staking is over and soaring into the sky is no longer realistic, the Chinese game industry will no longer have the temptation of huge profits, will there be more stunned young people who "dare to be the first in the world"?

The mature Japan game industry before us seems to have told us the answer: even if the game industry is no longer so profitable, even if the average age of the industry is increasing, as long as there are still young people who love games, the creativity of the industry will not dry up. Perhaps the next test is the love of China's next generation of gamers for games.

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