China is the world's first game market, there are still problems to face

This month in Haikou, the game of the annual meeting, the game to take out the entire industry this year's transcripts, 2014 the entire industry output value reached 114.48 billion yuan (about 18.42 billion U.S. dollars), the first breakthrough 100 billion yuan mark.

According to NPD Statistics, U.S. consumers in 2013 spent a total of 15.39 billion U.S. dollars to buy games (excluding game hardware, accessories), considering that over the years the U.S. game industry year-on-year growth rate is single-digit, foreign media gamesindustry and Joystiq released news, said China overtook the US as the world's largest gaming market in 2014.

In the media's view, in the case of the three-generation new mainframe this year, if the U.S. hardware sales of the game, China has not surpassed the United States, but from the game software perspective, perhaps as foreign media said, China has surpassed the United States in value.

The growth of the industry, to provide more opportunities for practitioners to celebrate the success, but after years of growing, body wide body fat, the industry still has a number of problems.

Issue 1: Lack of the ability to create original game brands and continue to operate brands

The prosperity of a country and an industry is the most successful enterprise and successful brand in the world. In the past more than 10 years, the development of the domestic game industry, the industry has left a completely Chinese-owned game brand is very limited, not to mention outside the country by overseas players recognized and accepted. "Legend" "Marvel" "World of Warcraft" "DNF" "through the FireWire," "The League of Heroes" These familiar, players many games are South Korea, Europe and the United States game developers.

and has a good reputation of domestic game brands are mostly remote stand-alone game era of products, such as "The Chinese Paladin" "Yuan Jian" "Swordsman love." Like "Journey" "Dream West Tour" "Dahua West Tour" This kind of original game brand is rare, more is to be able to find overseas original product imitation works, or rely on the original works of literature adaptation of products, similar to "Tianlong eight" "The Fairy".

Compared to European and American companies, a game brand of continuous research and development more than 10 generations of practice, although not necessarily represents innovation, but the continued operation of the brand reflects the European and American Japan game industry, the internal strength of how deep.

With the advent of IP fever in China, the copyright awareness of industry companies has greatly improved, it is worth affirming, but a large number of domestic companies from Japan to introduce hot anime IP, do not know the market people also think that the Chinese game companies in the Japanese game generation, the emergence of this phenomenon, explained that the Chinese cultural industry is weak on the other side.

Without excellent gaming brands that can move to global markets, even if China has become the world's largest gaming market, the industry's influence in the world of Chinese gaming will only be greatly compromised.

Question 2: Extensive growth depends on demographic dividend, dividend is nearly gone

The reason why the domestic game market continues to grow more than 10 years, a fundamental reason is that the development of the Chinese game industry has been in the period of industrial change, although the trend of slow growth in recent years is very obvious, but always in the industry encountered growth bottlenecks, ushered in the outbreak of change. 2008 began as a Web game, the 2010 is a social game, the beginning of 2012 is a mobile game, the future may also appear video games, host game opportunities.

Behind the years of industrial change, China's demographic dividend has underpinned the overall market growth, although gaming users in 2014 have grown by only 4.6% in single-digit numbers compared with 2013. The 2011 Year-on-year growth rate is 68.5%, 2012 is 24.1%, 2013 is 20.6%, in the domestic game industry development so many years, the industry has never encountered the user single-digit growth situation.

What is the growth rate of domestic game users in 2015? It is hard to predict, but this slowdown in user growth, including the reality of the decline of school-age students, will one day reflect the growth rate of the industry.

Question 3:arpu How much room for improvement? How long can the juicer run?

Need to be reminded that over the past few years, the domestic game player's annual per capita game consumption, has risen from 2011 per capita 135 yuan to 2014 years of 221 yuan, ARPU promotion is to support the growth of another driving force.

So our consumption of 221 yuan per capita this year is high or low? Compared to the United States, the United States currently has 185 million gamers, 2013 annual per capita consumption of about 517 yuan.

Compared with the annual per capita game consumption, China: The United States =1:2.3, from this figure, the domestic game companies may think ARPU still have room.

But compared to the next year's per capita income, the U.S. per capita annual income is 50,000 U.S. dollars, about 300,000 yuan, and China's 2013 per capita income is 11831 yuan.

Compared with annual per capita income, China: the United States =1:25.

Chinese annual income is 1/25 of the United States, but the game consumption has reached almost 2/5 of the United States, from the figures, the Chinese people certainly do not have the money, the reason for this ratio, perhaps the Chinese people too love to play games. But if ARPU continue to rise, distance the player can't play the Chinese game is not too far, see, a lot of game practitioners can't play their own development games and a few.

To allow players to pay, must be addicted to the game players, hate to stimulate the PvP to take out real money? This is a problem, from the player playing the money pressure of the game, the domestic game to the player's burden in step by step.

Question 4: Lack of innovation and independent game Spirit

What kind of game is a fun game? In the hand tour before the outbreak, the domestic hundreds of thousands of practitioners are developing a game: MMORPG, fortunately with a social game, with mobile games, the industry has the opportunity to break out of the deep pit of the MMO, began to really think about what is gameplay, but with Q4 variety of heavy product outbreaks, Emerging hand-travel markets are beginning to show signs of an MMO rise.

Against the European and American markets, the game is always a blooming situation, new ideas, new peripherals, new game ideas can create a new game experience, the past Chinese players only mouse and keyboard, now has a mobile phone, although there are improvements, such as "Legend of the sword" such innovative products are still a minority, The whole industry lacks a substantial breakthrough in the form of games, or a lack of the habit of independent innovation.

Domestic game industry research and development of products an extreme performance, is the increasingly numerical design of products, this created a hanging machine play everywhere, the game process of fun is compressed to a hanging word, it is sad, our players do not see the plot, do not do the task, unbearable copy of the boring, this kind of game habits completely rely on the player's head is not fair , developers tricky, lack of creative game design is also the main reason.

Another manifestation of China's inconsistent pace with the global gaming industry is China lacks the independent game the living space, now relies on the creativity to win the independent game repeatedly in the European and American Day market to obtain the astonishing performance, whether is the European and American host platform or the big digital downloading platform all to independent game developer throws the olive branch, but in the Chinese market, Independent game has always been the industry to see the object of light, regulatory departments, media, platforms, developers from the bottom, are in the "big" awareness of the dominant, but small and beautiful must be bad?

It is one of the reasons why the domestic gaming industry is at the creative level that there is no soil at the bottom of the creative game and that it relies entirely on the rules of commercial competition to replicate massively.