Inside Asian Gaming

MMO strongest right now, and he wants to be the number one guy. In order to do this, he needs honour points. How do you win honour points? You have to win wars! That way you can raise your [player] character level,” explains SamWoelm. There’s no way that Li Chen is going to beat the Kingdom of Khan. Her only objective is to last 30 minutes [in combat], because the Kingdom of Khan guys are saying‘We’ll beat you in ten [minutes]. So they ‘war’ and ‘war’. And Li Chen lasts forty minutes. Is she happy? Yes she’s happy! Is she completely satisfied? No! She wants revenge. She wants to ‘level up’ again, she has to buy more weapons, and so she has to go to the weapons store, the treasure chests, and the cycle goes on and on. And we can see how players last for anything from one to four years in this fantasy world,” states Mr Woelm. A battle scene from R.O.H.A.N. Screenshot of combat in Aion M ost players in MMO games in China are young adults, says Sam Woelm of C Y Foundation. “As far as the players are concerned, they’re normally about 18 to 30 years old, though 80% are less than 25. I’ve put our fictional player Li Chen at 28 years of age, which is not unusual. Certain MMO games are actually targeted at an older, more affluent audience, for obvious reasons. These MMO players are devoted to their game and they spend a lot of time—anywhere from 21 to 40 hours a week. When you compare this to casual games players like poker players, they spend seven to 20 hours a week. “The longer players spend in an MMO game, the more money they spend,” he points out. According to iResearch—a market research company with a presence in China—last year online gamers of all types (including casual games played on cellular phone handsets) in the Mainland spent an average of RMB188 (US$27.50) monthly on online games (including online fees). Those spending between RMB81 and RMB120 accounted for the highest percentage of the game playing audience, the consultancy added. Revenue gap According to iResearch analyst Zhao Xufeng, in the second quarter of 2008, quarterly revenue from online gaming in China broke the RMB50 billion barrier, bringing in RMB50.8 billion (US$7.4 billion). Shanda was in top spot with revenues of RMB8 billion during the quarter, while Hong Kong-listed Tencent was the fourth biggest player in this Mainland market, recording online gaming revenues of RMB4.8 billion during the quarter, said iResearch. “MMO games generate most of the revenue on the online platform [in China] and they also generate most of the traffic,” says SamWoelm. “They really are the anchor ‘tenant’ on the platform and the online operators rely on the MMO game and its players to populate the other online games such as card games, chess games, racing games, ‘first person’shooting games and dancing games—which are very popular now in China.” World of Warcraft Player Stats Who’s playing MMO games in China, and how much do they spend? INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2009 28