Memory of ChinaJoy’s Fifteen Years

The span of 15 years is a span that is very important in transformation of people, and so do the ChinaJoy, and so do the Chinese game industry which has undergone tremendous changes in the same 15 years. Accompanying the development of China’s pan-entertainment industry, ChinaJoy has grown from the initial adolescence to today’s capability, a process that a young people must pass through and that makes the 15-year old teenager ChinaJoy to the real maturity. The 15-year-old ChinaJoy always adheres to its initial mission, and never changes its positive energy – when we talk about it in our gossip, what is the most fortunate we feel is having stories that we can look back, recall, and re-motion.

First, the Game: “April showers bring May flowers”

For more than a decade, China’s game industry has been making unremitting efforts of exploration, and the annual ChinaJoy has become an annual “pilgrimage trip” that is indispensible for Chinese game pilgrims. In everyone’s expectation, the size of the pilgrimage is getting bigger and bigger like snowballing. More and more people are looking for good games in ChinaJoy, however, good works are always in short supply.

The domestic players have been looking forward to. However, although from 2004 till now the domestic games developed rapidly, the player’s taste has peppered up correspondingly. If we say game types in the early stage were rich and can meet all kinds of needs, however, things have changed as time goes by, and consumers require and demand more and more. So, the domestic game manufacturers still need to provide more, and the game types are still to be expanded. But, the game product content has reached a peak in quantity, which is why manufacturers want to innovate, players want to innovate, and all aspects need to be innovated.

In 2004, the Chinese online game market started and began to take shape. But at that time, the internet has been far from universal, and South Korea online games almost monopolized the domestic game market. At the first ChinaJoy, the number of domestic game manufacturers was less. On the Show were only the Korean games that attracted players. Fewer EU and US manufacturers participated in, only the French Ubisoft and Finland Nokia mobile games were present in the exhibition. For the Japanese games, it only got Sony here to promote its PS2 and EQ2.

The lack of independently-developed contents made us see the domestic game manufacturers need to be improved, and a blue ocean of the environment will become the very soil suitable for the game manufacturers to develop. In the following ChinaJoy events, the Perfect World, Tencent, Changyou, XOYO, Shanda and other national enterprises emerged, flourishing, and domestic independently-developed games were face-to-face competing with foreign products in ChinaJoy and gradually dominated in the next few years. Today, ChinaJoy has grown from the one of a pure client game show to the one of diversified development, with web games, mobile games, and Console games subsequently becoming hot spots one by one. During the successfully-held first eSmart in ChinaJoy 2016, VR/AR and other intelligent hardware industry had powerfully come to the Show; the arrival of the era of pan-entertainment has also promoted the rise of ACG culture. With 15 years of continuous progress and exploration, ChinaJoy has presented and will show more and more contents for players in the future. Today’s game market is no longer a single development. The era of large-scale integration has come. If there has been no such period of exploration, how can we see today’s industry flourishing?

Second, Showgirls: However beautiful they are, they are just side shows

Every time when talking about ChinaJoy, Showgirl is always a hot topic. Who will not fresh their eye-sights when in ChinaJoy? In 2004, the first ChinaJoy, no one can think of that beautiful girls can have such big promotion effects for game manufacturers and game shows, and it is even beyond the social significance a game show itself has. In the context of that era, there was no domestic platform that allowed game manufacturers to collectively promoting their products, so ChinaJoy’s presence was undoubtedly the one that provides excellent opportunities for them. Then the question came, when all the game manufacturers gathered here, how to create the most popular booths……? In fact, the original purpose was quite simple, that is, ChinaJoy wanted to provide a place for the players to gather and play, and for the game manufacturers to show their products at booths to the players.

If only from the Showgirl point of view, at the first ChinaJoy, actually not too many people cared about the energy of these young girls. Indeed, what actually caught up in their memory is the activity the “Westward Journey 2” for which Stephen Chow participated in person at the scene, or the “Special reports of ChinaJoy” that CCTV5 conducted two hours. This also laid the basis for ChinaJoy to become a pilgrimage land in the hearts of Chinese players. The time that really makes Showgirl famous is in the 2005 ChinaJoy when a showgirl named Sun Ting appeared on the event. Sun Ting became the most beautiful Showgirl that year, and her popularity soared to reach the peak. Now while looking back, we will find that it is maybe Sun Ting’s popularity that promoted the Showgirl phenomenon.

Over the next few years at every ChinaJoy, game manufacturers generally began to increase investment in Showgirls, and sometimes showgirls were even hotter than games. Only until 2015 when ChinaJoy issued the historically most stringent order on Showgirl, the major manufacturers started to return on the normal track.

Attracted by the most beautiful scenery at the venue, people’s attention on Showgirls may be no less than on the games. Maybe, among the Showgirls, not all of them are perfect. But we also know that girls who earn part-time living cost are not a few. The presence at the scene of those girls who bring their smile to everyone and stand on the stage all day is the most beautiful positive energy of ChinaJoy.

Today’s ChinaJoy began to strictly manage Showgirl, and officially designated a model supervision agency to implement the new rules. For Showgirls, this is undoubtedly a strong support, and is a start for Showgirls to establish social image and good reputation.

Third, the Industry: Numerous Flowers on the Roads are Blossoming;

In the last two years people always heard that the monopoly by game industry giants has become more and more serious, and this is inevitable when the game industry has developed to a certain stage; and if you got something to expect in the game industry, that is ChinaJoy.

In the past in people’s mind, ChinaJoy starting from 2004 is just a simple game show in which manufacturers issued peripheral products, and this is repeated year after year. Today, ChinaJoy is no longer a simple game show. It contains broader and far richer contents.

Early years, due to technical constraints, games produced were rough and single, and often just with simple pictures and stories and gameplays to create a game system. And a single-player game just occupied a few Gigabytes. But now, even a mobile game that is with beautiful picture would often occupy a few Gigabytes in your mobile phone memory. In fact, this is the development of the game. From music, pictures, plot, and setting to the story system, all has been carefully crafted. The reason why game is called the ninth art is precisely because it integrates more Kind of art forms, and integration has become the biggest trend in the era of pan-entertainment.

In 2016, ChinaJoy was undergoing new upgrade, covering comprehensive fields of pan-entertainment, and film & television, animation and online literature has become indispensable elements in ChinaJoy. The “both Soft and hard” strategic layout is a new attemptand a change for adapting to the development and transformation of the times, and more importantly, it is a stick to the initial vision and mission of ChinaJoy. Today’s ChinaJoy has long not been a single game show, but the one that integrates a lot of sectors that no doubt will be more worth seeing.

In the 15 years, ChinaJoy has all the way witnessed the growth of the Chinese game industry, its changes, upgrades …… and the experiences in the past have become valuable assets. What will be really left will become the glorious history of Chinese game industry. Nowadays, this young teenager is moving wisely and maturely. It needs us to look into the future or what will happen, with our positive energy. Only in this way can we carry forward the social responsibility of ChinaJoy, and really realize the significance in development of China’s game industry.

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