Delivered at Casual Connect Europe 2016 Navigating, or even understanding, China is no small feat for mobile indie developers. Not only is self-publishing unfeasible, just finding the right publisher can be difficult. In this session, Jeff aims to shed some light on China’s complex mobile game market and offers a few suggestion on finding the best model and partner.

1. Bringing Western Games to China:
The Difficulties and Challenges
Gary Huang
International BD Director
NetEase

2. Content
• About Chinese Market
• The Difficulties and
Challenges
• Successful Example

3. About Chinese Market
PART ONE

4. Why China ?!
Mobile Game
Users
Smartphone
Users
4% 29%
2010
About 35 Million
Mobile Game Users
2015
About 374 Million
Mobile Game Users

5. 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

6. PART TWO
Bringing Western Games to China:
The Difficulties and Challenges

7. 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

8. Technology

9. Competition: The Best Only
With fierce competition, only the innovative and
well polished games can win over the most of games

10. The Difficulties and Challenges ?
User
Experience
CommunityMonetization

11. Innovative
gameplay
• Market is saturated with
copies
• Market trends move too
rapidly
• Famous IP + AAA quality no
longer enough to stand out

12. Game should make financial sense
Opportunity
for large
scale
expansion Big
potential
audience
Well-
integrated
monetization
Not competing
with
established
market leaders

13. 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

14. 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

15. PART THREE
Successful Example

16. 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

17. Localization
Social
User
Interface
Daily
Task
Newbie
guide
Leader-
board

18. Full optimization of Newbie guide

19. Full optimization of Newbie guide

20. 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”

21. 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”

22. Ver. 3.1.0
Add Galaxy
match play
2 teams compete and according to both sides'
victory or defeat, they get corresponding points
reward.
Special Award
Randomly get some real teams' badges, uniform
vouchers and boundary breaking bonds.

23. Gary Huang
International BD Director
NetEase
gzgaryhuang@corp.netease.com