Cosplay, the whole world of dressing up as characters from video games, is alive and well in China.  You can see a whole array of game-inspired art, masquerade, and photography here, at the game zone of Tom.com.  Frankly, I can’t even begin to identify the games from which these characters come.  Scroll down…

Continue readingfor cosplay fans

Danwei has a post on Chinese gaming giant Shanda Entertainment’s recent educational online game, “Learning from Comrade Lei Feng.”  Lei Feng was a model of self-sacrificing youth, held up by the Chinese Communist Party as an inspiration to millions during China’s Cultural Revolution.

Rather than beating bosses, players prevent crowds from wrong acts such as spitting, littering, and…

Continue readingleave revolutionary heroes out of games

Two Chinese computer science university students made a pot of money–over US $150,000–operating 43 pirate servers of Shanda’s (Nasdaq: SNDA) online game
Legend of Mir 2.  They were arrested in February.

If legal game operators are not delivering a reliable experience (see post below), there may be even less incentive for players to use official servers.

link

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Continue readingPirate servers profitable

Imagine you and 500 members of your alliance have just spent 4 and a half hours organizing yourselves, going on the long journey to the Gate of Ahn’Qiraj in World of Warcraft (WoW), and undertaking a quest.  Just before you kill the final boss and get the loot, you’re all disconnected from the server.

Frustrated?  If you’re Chinese, you send…

Continue readingAlmost storming ‘The Gate of Ahn’Qiraj’

Pacific Epoch has great data on Chinese online gaming markets and companies.  You can get a free pre-release of their 2005 Q4 report here.  Just a few of the many useful findings:

• percentage of game-playing internet population doubled from 2004 to
  2005, with about 37 million gamers reported at end of 2005.
• EA has committed…

Continue readingexcellent online games report

Mainland Chinese are becoming famous for their hacking and farming capabilities.  The latest: a South Korean  network security company tracks down a ring of virtual item hackers participating in mass theft from tens of thousands of South Korean “Lineage” players:

During the period from May 2005 to February
2006, South Korea reported about 4,000 online game theft cases, in
which…

Continue readingChinese stealing virtual property

Nice interview on Joystiq with Hoyt Ma, The9’s Senior Marketing Manager for World of Warcraft.   
WoW has been a massive hit in China–Chinese gamers make up half of the game’s worldwide player base.  And this despite technical [graphics and broadband requirements], financial, and visual [getting used to 3D vs. 2D Korean games] barriers for ordinary players.  But…

Continue readingSinifying World of Warcraft