Everyone knows about World of Warcraft
Despite our age handicap, we managed to recognize pictures of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, pinpoint the year 1975 as the official end of the Vietnam war, and guess that it was no other than Edwinn Star belting out “War! Hugh!” Seriously - who doesn’t love that song? And I find it fascinating that the music trivia category (which consists completely of audio clues) always turns into a bad karaoke contest.
We took fourth place - in the middle of the pack, but not too shabby, all things considered. We got free drinks care of the happy hour machine (when you buy a drink, they give you a small remote - you hit a button which stops a wheel, telling you what prize you receive), won a bonus prize of 100å…ƒ for answering that the capital of modern Ethiopia is Addis Ababa, and had a pretty damn good time in the process. After the gaming was over, the four of us who were still up for merrymaking took our bonus prize winnings and bought ourselves kebabs and a final round of drinks at Butterfly Bar around the corner (100 å…ƒ won’t buy much elsewhere), before calling it a night.
If you were wondering why this blog hasn’t been updated for a while its because I have been travelling in the US for work for almost a month. Its great to come back to China after being away for such a long time and seeing the masses of people everywhere on every corner almost 24 hours. Coming back to the US after 2 years feels like you’ve been away for only 2 months. However, coming back to China after 1 month feels like you’ve been away for 1 year. In the next few weeks as I adjust to reverse culture shock, I am getting ready to return to the US for another 3 weeks after the May holidays.
So what did I learn on this last trip from attending Wondercon and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco? I learned that interest in the China Game market is quite hot. In the US, the Casual Game space is heating up as well with the Nintendo DS, Wii and Xbox Live Arcade opening up whole new markets and revenue sources for independent and casual game developers. When you combine casual games and China in a discussion, people tend to perk up and listen. Everyone knows about World of Warcraft and China but the real excitement for everyone is the casual game industry of China and Korea which seem to be pioneering whole new genres of advanced casual games and business models. not yet seen or tried in North America.