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Press release:
At the Tencent Game Developers Conference in China, new insight into the games industry market was revealed as well as Tencent’s intention to break into overseas markets.

According to the “2019 China game industry semi-annual report”, it shows that up to June 2019, China’s game user scale is about 554 million people, a year-on-year growth of 5.1%.

The report also shows the first half of the Chinese game industry’s sales revenue was $16.3 billion (116.31 billion yuan), a growth of 10.8% from 2018. The results conclude that China is the world’s largest game market.

Additionally, market research shows 2019 is significantly better than the previous year in terms of the whole industry, indicating a recovery of high- quality games. In 2019, the global game market’s revenue is expected to reach $152.1 billion.

The topic of global markets was touched on by discussing the accumulation of overseas game enterprises in the field of technical tools and R&D, as well as their experience in world-building and IP building, especially in technical tools. As Tencent goes global, a lot of what it faces is the competition from AAA companies overseas.

Ubisoft is very aggressive and smart, and they are learning from the Chinese gaming industry for experience in developing mobile games and other non-console games, as well as cultural output and IP building. Under the current policy environment.

There are still many overseas development opportunities waiting for Chinese game enterprises in the future.

For the 5G game industry, Tencent believes that it should fully study the new architecture and game design, and fully understand and take advantage of the new means that 5G brings to game developers.

At the same time, the deployment of 5G will make broadband more accessible to users who previously had difficulty accessing it and cared about the cost.
Once 5G arrives, it’s likely that traffic costs will become so low that they’ll be almost negligible.

This begs questions such as:

How to make games more personalized in the face of an exploding audience?
With the so-called interconnection of everything, sensors are entering life and society in large numbers.
How to creatively use the surrounding conditions to make the games more realistic, more interesting and more dynamic?

The Tencent Institute of games has launched a series of partnerships with Peking University, Tsinghua University, the University of Southern California, and 16 other institutions to promote the development of game education and research in China throughout the last year.

This is a concentrated effort to help developers polish and optimize product quality and facilitate the launch of creative products through Game Without Borders (GWB), a global creative cooperation program in games.

This conference brought together industry-renowned experts, scholars, game developers, and enthusiasts to share the latest game research and development experience, industry and academic development trends, and developer support results.

“When Chinese companies go overseas, we are facing the most competitive AAA companies like Ubisoft. They are very enterprising and clever. I think a policy environment is really in need of improvement internally because there are still a lot of opportunities waiting for Chinese’s gaming enterprises to develop overseas.” Said Xialing, the president of Tencent Institute of games.

Lastly, TGDC’s shining panel discussions resulted in engaging audiences and a fantastic talk on how to make a game last long with long-term thinking. Thomas Vu, the head of IP development for League of Legends, explained how the team built the game from a MOBA game into a complete super-IP universe during nearly a decade after its launch.

Yao Runhao, founder and CEO of Paper Games, told the story behind the project, Shining Nikki. He explained that based on the pursuit of innovation and technology upgrade and the desire for meeting user requirements, the combat system, social system, photographing system, and the new-released AR function endowed the game with diverse playing methods.

Ye Weichen, General Manager of Operator Division of Intel (China) Co., Ltd., shared the changes and opportunities brought by 5G technology to the game industry, in a presentation titled “5G Energizes Development of the Game Industry.”

Popular cross-platform games face the pain of incompatibility among different device platforms, while cloud games, with good cross-device compatibility, make game testing easier.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the telecom industry, Ye also put forward exploration suggestions calling on game developers and operators to pay more attention to the new features and architecture of 5G.

About Tencent Game Developers Conference
Tencent Game Developers Conference is an annual event organized by the Tencent Institute of Games. As a learning and networking platform, its purpose is to promote the development of the industry and co-create an ecosystem for game developers.

The event has industry professionals and scholars from China and abroad sharing the latest findings in-game R&D, the current trend in the industry as well as in the academic world, and developers supporting each other on the latest developments in order to eventually promote the growth and explore new possibilities for the gaming industry.

Jonas “O.J” Ek
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround