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GarageGames and China
GarageGames and China
| Name: | Benjamin Bradley |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jul 27, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Benjamin Bradley |
Blog post
So what happens when you cross a 30 hour plane flight with an accused CIA spy with hundreds of half-naked dancing girls and a series of "maotai GANBEI's"? You get Benjamin's trip to China. That's right, this past week I traveled to Shanghai, China to take part in "ChinaJoy" as a speaker about Casual Games and also spoke at an invitational evening dinner cruise on the "Bund" about game development.
The skyline of Pu Dong - a new industrial - high-tech part of Shanghai.
It's always a bit crazy getting on a plane on early Tuesday morning and getting off the plane late Wednesday evening. Gotta love that lose of a day, but don't worry I gained it right back on the flight back. (I left Shaghai at 10:30AM Monday and arrived back in Eugene at 1:30PM THE SAME DAY... even though 19 hours had passed).
Anyway, back during GDC, I had started to develop a relationship with Zhan Ye, a man who publishes the only Game Developer magazine in China. And things started looking good to talk with many different universities in China about using Torque to teach game development and programming. So I headed off to China to try and throw one rock at three different birds.
1. ChinaJoy - The biggest game conference in China. Think of it as a cross between E3 and CES and then open it up to the public and you're starting to get the picture. Now I knew that I would stand being a foreigner with blond hair, but I wasn't expecting to be personally greeted by the mayor/provincial leader of Shanghai while just standing up against the wall. During ChinaJoy, I was able to meet with many different companies that are wanting to develop their own games and own their own IP, something indies at GG know all about but in China owning your own IP is a fairly new idea. One of the companies was 'the9" that wants to expand into the casual gaming market, by the way, they are the ones who do World-of-Warcraft in China. While at ChinaJoy, I also spoke on the Casual Games market at how during the next few years the market worth of casual games is going to go through the roof so that by 2008 it will be worth several billion dollars.
At ChinaJoy, there were many stages instead of booths and they all had MMO play-acting taking place. Tons of people gathered round to see their favorite MMO or Anime acted out
Haven't you ever wanted to dress up as your favorite warrior and stand for 10 hours a day for three days?
LineageII is still super popular. They had a LineageII / Jeopardy competition going on during ChinaJoy
Everquest II showcased some upcoming secret info in their hidden theater... I signed some sort of NDA, but I have no idea what it said... It was in Chinese. I probably ended up becoming the first foreign human to contractually marry some exotic elf or something.
Bubbles and half-naked dancing girls... ahhhh now the gaming conference is complete.
I personally enjoyed the Chinese Boy Band that came up after this group and covered nSync and the BackStreetBoys. Now that was funny. Not sure what it had to do with games.
2. I was also in China to speak at Brilliant Night, an invitational dinner cruise with industry leaders. GarageGames made a lot of great contacts with different groups. There's a lot I can't talk about, but lets just say Torque and GarageGames are seeing great opportunites open up in China.
3. The third reason I was in China was to speak to universities about Torque and educational opportunities. Not only did I get some time to sit down with the man who created the first game development degree in China but I also got to teach Torque 2D on Sunday to a game development club at a division of Shanghai University.
This was a picture of the university building where I was teaching
Other things I learned about China:
1. Many of the Chinese gamers still love Tribes and several nights we were toasting Tribes late into the night. GANBEI Tribes (I don't know how many times I had to say ganbei and then drink this crazy 75% proof firewater called maotai or something like that.)
2. Be very careful when walking through seldom traveled areas and encountering drunk cops, because they like to start shouting "CIA - SPY" at you.
3. Chinese gamers like dancing girls. (plus Pat wanted me to bring him back a date)
There you go Pat, I hope you're happy.
Next up.... IndieGamesCon... stay tuned for some cool updates about what's happening this year.
The skyline of Pu Dong - a new industrial - high-tech part of Shanghai.
It's always a bit crazy getting on a plane on early Tuesday morning and getting off the plane late Wednesday evening. Gotta love that lose of a day, but don't worry I gained it right back on the flight back. (I left Shaghai at 10:30AM Monday and arrived back in Eugene at 1:30PM THE SAME DAY... even though 19 hours had passed).
Anyway, back during GDC, I had started to develop a relationship with Zhan Ye, a man who publishes the only Game Developer magazine in China. And things started looking good to talk with many different universities in China about using Torque to teach game development and programming. So I headed off to China to try and throw one rock at three different birds.
1. ChinaJoy - The biggest game conference in China. Think of it as a cross between E3 and CES and then open it up to the public and you're starting to get the picture. Now I knew that I would stand being a foreigner with blond hair, but I wasn't expecting to be personally greeted by the mayor/provincial leader of Shanghai while just standing up against the wall. During ChinaJoy, I was able to meet with many different companies that are wanting to develop their own games and own their own IP, something indies at GG know all about but in China owning your own IP is a fairly new idea. One of the companies was 'the9" that wants to expand into the casual gaming market, by the way, they are the ones who do World-of-Warcraft in China. While at ChinaJoy, I also spoke on the Casual Games market at how during the next few years the market worth of casual games is going to go through the roof so that by 2008 it will be worth several billion dollars.
At ChinaJoy, there were many stages instead of booths and they all had MMO play-acting taking place. Tons of people gathered round to see their favorite MMO or Anime acted out
Haven't you ever wanted to dress up as your favorite warrior and stand for 10 hours a day for three days?
LineageII is still super popular. They had a LineageII / Jeopardy competition going on during ChinaJoy
Everquest II showcased some upcoming secret info in their hidden theater... I signed some sort of NDA, but I have no idea what it said... It was in Chinese. I probably ended up becoming the first foreign human to contractually marry some exotic elf or something.
Bubbles and half-naked dancing girls... ahhhh now the gaming conference is complete.
I personally enjoyed the Chinese Boy Band that came up after this group and covered nSync and the BackStreetBoys. Now that was funny. Not sure what it had to do with games.
2. I was also in China to speak at Brilliant Night, an invitational dinner cruise with industry leaders. GarageGames made a lot of great contacts with different groups. There's a lot I can't talk about, but lets just say Torque and GarageGames are seeing great opportunites open up in China.
3. The third reason I was in China was to speak to universities about Torque and educational opportunities. Not only did I get some time to sit down with the man who created the first game development degree in China but I also got to teach Torque 2D on Sunday to a game development club at a division of Shanghai University.
This was a picture of the university building where I was teaching
Other things I learned about China:
1. Many of the Chinese gamers still love Tribes and several nights we were toasting Tribes late into the night. GANBEI Tribes (I don't know how many times I had to say ganbei and then drink this crazy 75% proof firewater called maotai or something like that.)
2. Be very careful when walking through seldom traveled areas and encountering drunk cops, because they like to start shouting "CIA - SPY" at you.
3. Chinese gamers like dancing girls. (plus Pat wanted me to bring him back a date)
There you go Pat, I hope you're happy.
Next up.... IndieGamesCon... stay tuned for some cool updates about what's happening this year.
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|---|
Submit your own resources!| Prairie Games (Jul 27, 2005 at 19:00 GMT) |
The fine tradition of the stinky locker room continues!!!
-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games
| Pat Wilson (Jul 27, 2005 at 19:27 GMT) |
GANBEI Tribes! (and dancing girls)
| Prairie Games 3 (Jul 27, 2005 at 20:03 GMT) |
| Kirby Webber (Jul 27, 2005 at 20:32 GMT) |
| Unsung Zero (Jul 27, 2005 at 20:50 GMT) |
Games yay!
Dancing chicks yay!!!
| Chris Calef (Jul 27, 2005 at 21:16 GMT) |
| Gabor Forrai (Jul 27, 2005 at 21:49 GMT) |
| Joseph Helm (Jul 27, 2005 at 22:07 GMT) |
Welcome back Ben.
Edited on Jul 27, 2005 22:08 GMT
| Prairie Games (Jul 27, 2005 at 22:16 GMT) |
I am no prude, though one employee posting babe images and another making lewd comments are potentially alienating to members of your community.
It is my opinion that this stuff is for personal blogs and not for blogs on your company website. This is the equivalent of allowing employees to have pin-ups in their cubes.. in this case, they are more so in your lobby.
It's not cool.
-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games
Edited on Jul 27, 2005 23:09 GMT
| Matt Vitelli (Jul 27, 2005 at 23:06 GMT) |
| Peter Dwyer (Jul 27, 2005 at 23:20 GMT) |
Lighten up a bit! The girls were there to be photographed and bring punters to the booths. I do agree about the comments though. They are a little much even if meant totally in the spirit of fun.
| Prairie Games (Jul 27, 2005 at 23:38 GMT) |
Edited on Jul 27, 2005 23:42 GMT
| Benjamin Bradley (Jul 27, 2005 at 23:40 GMT) |
Edited on Jul 27, 2005 23:45 GMT
| Prairie Games (Jul 27, 2005 at 23:43 GMT) |
Edit: ... and look... me... myself... personally... I have absolutely no problem with total frontal nudity... In fact, I like it. I'm not offended by ANY of the images you posted. I think they are quite tame.
If this is your personal blog, good for you. I am simply saying that the unmodified blog could have been offensive to some of the Garage Games community members.
I have zero patience for the "boy's club" mentality of this industry. It's furthered in subtle and not so subtle ways.
Edited on Jul 28, 2005 00:52 GMT
| Adam "Asphodel" Labbe (Jul 28, 2005 at 00:53 GMT) |
| Prairie Games (Jul 28, 2005 at 00:55 GMT) |
Quote:
you have a mighty high horse you ride on there Josh.
You missed the wings.
I wouldn't have commented on the modified blog. The original had 3 large images of "Booth Babes". The first reaction being: "Girls!!! Oh, you went to China?" ... anyway, the point I was trying to make is that material like this could alienate some members of the GG community. My guess is probably not...
I wonder why so few females are in the games industry? It has to be with them not being cool enough. It couldn't have anything to do with intimidation on multiple levels? Nah! Look at the credits for World of Warcraft, it's literally unbelievable!!!
Edited on Jul 28, 2005 01:28 GMT
| Phil Carlisle (Jul 28, 2005 at 08:39 GMT) |
Be sure to let me know next year and I'll meet up with you there. I'm looking for contacts in china too.
It looks like the chinese market is very similar to the korean and japanese markets.. no surprise there really. Things are definitely hotting up in that area of the world though. As I'm out here in Singapore right now, I get the feeling that for a few good contacts, I could really get some interesting work lined up.
Just so's you know Ben, I'm big into the asian market. I think china has a lot of potential and I love the korean willingness to embrace games at a universal level.
Hmmm, things are definitely moving on.
Incidentally, how if you have any good contacts at chinese uni's for game development kind of stuff, please pass them on. I'm hell bent on trying to get our game course started out there in china (Bolton has a few links with chinese universities out there already).
I had hoped that chinajoy would be later so I could go this year, I guess I forgot about it. Ahh well.
See you at IGC!
Phil.
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