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As the publishing director at Spacejazz Games, Alice gave a talk called "Navigating the Dragon: Cracking the China Game Market" in the Barcelona event, and then caught up with Gamereactor's David Caballero to talk about localisation, visibility, and more.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is the Barcelona Game Fest, as you can see in the background.
We took this one in the outside because it's fantastic weather today and I'm here joined by Alice, who yesterday had a very interesting panel talking about how to publish indie games in the biggest market ever, which is the Chinese market, so thank you so much for joining us."
"Which would you say was the main takeaway that developers and players and even publishers gathered here got from your panel?
So I think for some of the countries whose mother language is English, because English is a common language and so many Chinese people can also speak English, so if you are a United Kingdom developer or a United States developer, there are so many Chinese companies and so many Chinese publishers will come to this country and talk with this English mother language developer."
"But for Spain, it's totally different, because Spanish is kind of hard for Chinese people and there are little Chinese companies and Chinese publishers will come to Spain and talk with a Spanish developer.
Therefore, when I came to the Barcelona Game Festival, I realised so many Spanish developers for the first time meet real Chinese indie game industry people."
"So they have so many very basic questions about the Chinese market.
For example, what Chinese players will care about?
What kind of games do the players like?
And my game is a horror game."
"Can Chinese players play horror games like Western players?
Because I have gone to all over the world, so many different countries, so I feel for Spanish developers and other countries' developers, it's totally different.
Even a Spanish developer is still in a stage of feeling very uncomfortable and losing confidence about the Chinese market."
"And I'm here just to make all of the developers have a basic view about the Chinese market.
I want to let these developers know that China may be a faraway country, but there is not a very big difference between China and the Western market.
Because we are all humans, we have the same feeling."
"If your game is fun, you can make everybody laugh.
And Chinese people will also feel fun and laugh for your game, and your game can win.
It's just like that, it's just simple, so don't worry too much.
Okay, and how would you say your previous experience with other companies, releasing AA and AAA games into the Chinese market, sort of brought you to this point where you are more interested in smaller indie games and making them enter the Chinese market?
I have two very great work experiences in two great Chinese game publishers."
"One is called XD and another one is called IOI Games.
Those two games both publish so many games, but of course some indie titles and of course some AAA or maybe 2A titles.
But for me personally, I do love the indie games, because when I was very young, when I was a little girl, I loved the small indie games."
"So when I grew up, I just wanted to work for the indie titles.
Yeah, that's why I only wanted to do the indie game publishing.
I'm not interested in the AAA publishing, that's the truth.
If I'm correct, there are restrictions to the Chinese market when it comes to language."
"Is it still like that, that you still have to have traditional Chinese language to your game in order for it to be published in China?
Is it like a hurdle for games and for publishers to publish in China because of the language?
Okay, so the first thing I wanted to point out, because you mentioned about the traditional Chinese, but because in China, for mainland China people, we use the simplified Chinese."
"We didn't use the traditional Chinese.
Only Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, those people, they use the traditional Chinese.
So simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese are two totally different languages.
It's kind of like Spanish and Latin American Spanish."
"It looks the same but still has a little difference.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
So for the language challenge, I definitely agree with you."
"I think if your game wants to truly get successful, you must have the Chinese language.
And that is because of two reasons.
The first reason is Chinese players are always thinking the localization is a reflection of the developer's attitude."
"It shows, do you care about this market?
The same happens in Spain.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Because for Spanish players, your mother language is Spanish, not English."
"Yeah, it's the same.
So every country's player wants to play the game with their own mother language.
Yes.
Yeah, so it's all about the attitude."
"So if you have the Chinese language, you show your attitude is positive and you care about the market.
You respect the people who live in this land.
So you have the localization, you show your respect attitude and the player will have the willingness to try your game and even to view your store page."
"If you don't have localization, they just click close.
And they don't like to view the store page.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is the first reason."
"And the second reason, I think, for Chinese people is because whether in English or maybe Spanish or French or German, they all use the letters.
So some words look a little bit similar."
"You can guess the meaning.
But for Chinese, because the Chinese don't use the letter in simplified Chinese or the traditional Chinese, we use the graphic character.
So the language system is totally different between English or Spanish or French."
"So it's very hard to let the player guess the meaning.
If the player don't know English or maybe their English skill is bad, then they can't even understand the game.
How they can play the game?
So they maybe will very quickly quit your game and give up the game."
"So if you don't have the Chinese localization, it's kind of like you lose your potential in the Chinese market.
Of course.
But it's not mandatory to have the localization to publish in China."
"Is it you do have to have it in order to publish or you can publish without Chinese language?
Sorry.
Can you publish a game in China without the Chinese language?
You mean for the police part or for the government part?
Exactly."
"If you are allowed to publish in China, come slightly closer to the camera so that the sun is not hitting you.
Yes, absolutely.
So yes, if you don't have the Chinese language, you can still publish the game in the China market."
"For example, the recently cast is a very famous puzzle game called the Blueprints.
Yes, the Blueprints.
Yes, it's very famous and it's very successful.
And we all know Blueprints only support English."
"Okay.
And this game is also played by Chinese players.
But because it's very hard to understand through the English, so the player group of the Blueprints in China is a little bit narrow."
"It's not a very popular game in China.
It could be much more popular.
Yes, it could be because the Blueprints is such a great and genius puzzle game.
I mean, it's so fabulous."
"All right.
All right.
And final question.
With companies such as your publisher and with how publishing systems have changed, would you say now that it's easier than ever to publish in the Chinese market, would you say there is a huge opportunity for publishers now that we are having this crisis in the industry, mostly in the Western industry, but also in Japan?
Do you think there is a beautiful opportunity here for market when we are going through some harsh times in the industry?
Actually, I think at the current stage, it's kind of an opportunity combined with a challenge."
"Because before five years or maybe ten years ago, there were only a few games that supported Chinese.
So if one game supported Chinese, every Chinese player will buy your game and play your game because they have limitation choice."
"Because there are not many games with Chinese language.
But today, everybody knows China is a big market and they want to get success in China.
So every game will do the Chinese localization."
"That makes the player have more and more choice than ten years or five years ago.
So it makes the market so challenging.
If you have a new game, it's very hard to catch the player's eyes."
"Because literally every day, players can see more than ten or even one hundred new games on our social media or on Steam.
It makes a game, if you don't have a famous team or if you don't have a famous IP, it's very hard to make a player remember or want to add your game into their wish list."
"So this is the challenge part.
But for the opportunity part, it's all because now we all know the Chinese market is growing very rapidly."
"Because more and more people are being loved in PC and console games.
So the market gets bigger and bigger.
You have the new players and those part of new players may have different tests for the different types."
"It means you don't have to do the very popular genre of your game.
You can do anything you want.
Any type you like.
Even if you are not a popular type, please believe there are still some Chinese players who may like your game's type."
"So whether you're developing any type of game, you definitely will have the potential in the Chinese market.
Because the population is big.
So the player base is also big enough."
"Fantastic.
I think it's very interesting pieces of insight that you gave us into the Chinese market.
Good luck with your company."
"I hope to see many Western indie games being published in China by you, Alice.
And enjoy the rest of the show.
Thank you. Thank you so much."
