GDC China

Posted by Forrest Woolworth. Forrest just returned from attending GDC China in Shanghai with Justin. He's still a bit jet-lagged, but he learned a ton and met some great people at the conference, uncovered a lot about the Chinese smartphone market, and got to see some awesome sights.

It started out with a flight over the North Pole to the other side of the world. After 15 hours in the air Justin and I arrived in a foreign, yet surprisingly familiar land where KFC is the dominate fast food chain, Pizza Hut is a classy "date" restaurant, and you can still get your favorite no-whip Carmel Machiatto on most street corners. We were in Shanghai. The reason? GDC China - everyone's favorite game developers conference - to learn, meet, and uncover the magic of the East.

The first session was an eye opener. It was given in Japanese, translated to Chinese, then finally translated to English. Imagine playing telephone, but in 3 different languages (and I'll assume the translators weren't just making stuff up). Many sessions were given in Chinese, and others in English. We got to wear cool earpieces to listen to the real-time translations (like at the UN!). Presenters and attendees came from big and small gaming companies from around the Globe including EA, Ubisoft, DeNA, Kabaam, Booyah, Playdom, and many more.

The 3 days of sessions were interesting and informative, and Star Wars references seemed to be a reoccurring reference throughout many of them. There were many common industry themes and tactics across both Eastern and Western gaming companies, but also many surprising differences in game design philosophies and thoughts on how in-game economies should function. Session topics included globalization of games, RPG design, in-game economic systems, and more. Parallel Kingdom even got a shout-out during one of the sessions.

If you thought the US smartphone market was young and still emerging (it's only been around for about 3 years), the Chinese market makes the US market look old school and well established. This "Wild Wild East" Chinese market is brand new and is seeing explosive smartphone growth. Unfortunately, it's extremely fragmented as far as App distribution goes. Think AOL style "walled gardens" of content - there is no central App distribution channel, making for an interesting yet complicated market to say the least.

Not only is the mobile market seeing rapid growth world wide, but according to an industry vet at GDC China, the RPG space has seen more change in the past 3 years than in the last 30 years. Globalization is also a huge issue. Many challenges exist in taking a product global beyond just translations. Globalization is tied directly to localization, and ultimately culturalization. These are just some of the challenges that keep us on our toes every day.

We also have some exciting news on the GDC front. Justin was selected to give a session at the main GDC in San Francisco this Spring. The session will focus on the lessons learned in our experience bootstrapping PerBlue. We're pumped for this opportunity, and we will have more details for you soon.