_Qi.jpg?width=100&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "Picture of Cheng(Orange) Qi")
_Qi.jpg?width=400&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "Cheng(Orange) Qi")
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Why Chinese developers are making high quality ACG mobile games?
In the past year, there have been a number of mobile games made by Chinese developers with very authentic Japanese ACG look and feel that become top grossing games in Japan and South Korea.Why they want to make such games? And why they can do so well?
8 Min Read
In the past year or two, there have been a number of mobile games made by Chinese developers with very authentic Japanese ACG look and feel that become top grossing games in Japan and South Korea. That makes my friends wonder why Chinese developers want to make such games and why they can do so well. Herein you will find my personal opinions.
Why Chinese developers want to make ACG mobile games?
1. Young people in China, especially those born after 1985 or 1990 (Generation Z), have been greatly influenced by Japanese ACG (Anime, Comic and Games) culture. As these young people graduated from schools/universities, ACG started becoming a very important subculture in China. Many of today’s well-known teams or companies were founded around 2010, when these young people were in their 20s or mid-20s.
MICA Team was founded in 2008, and then they developed Girls' Frontline
miHoYo was founded in 2012, and then they developed Collapse Gakuen 3
Bilibili was founded in 2009, and then they became the biggest ACG streaming and video platform in China and published many successful ACG games
…
2. At first there were actually not many teams there. They tried to create this kind of games just because they love them so much. But after the success of several games in China, more and more developers and publishers started flooding into the market. Now there are hundreds of studios/companies developing ACG games in China.
This market looks very profitable, because marketing costs can be kept very low if you know how to use the community for promotion. Take miHoYo as an example:
Year
Marketing Costs
Revenue
2014
CNY 4,631,000
2015
CNY 13,901,600
2016
CNY 34,947,300
2017 (first half)
CNY 51,622,400
Due to the high loyalty of users, such games can easily survive for many years. Take the platform of Bilibili as an example:
80%+ users were born between 1990 and 2009.
The yearly retention rate of full members is 79%+.
Each user spends 70+ minutes on the platform everyday on average
These games promote more positive and positive emotions among players.
Vice President of Bilibili: “The revenue from traditional games comes from hatred, from the competition between players, from the belief that I should be stronger than others; the revenue from ACG games comes from love, from the belief that I love the character.”
Why Chinese developers can do so well in this area?
If you look at the well-known teams or companies today, you will find that the founders were all deeply influenced by Japanese ACG culture. Before started working on this kind of game, some of them had been creating fan art, some had been tech otakus for a long time, and some had been running ACG communities…
There are already many good Chinese artists there that can create Japanese look characters and environment. And the developers learned how to work together with famous Japanese CVs, or even got their game licensed.
There were not many experienced developers for PC and console games in China, but for mobile games, Chinese developers started almost at the same time as the developers in other countries. Today, their ability to develop mobile games is as good as, or sometimes even better than foreign developers in some specific fields.
Bilibili, NetEase Manga, Tencent Manga and social media have made ACG culture easier to spread across China and attract a lot of attention. China has so many people, that even it were a niche market, it would have enough users and generate enough revenue to feed multiple products and development teams. This gives the developers the opportunity to focus on what they are good at. Nowadays, there are more than 80 million core ACG fans in China, and more than 310 million potential ACG fans.
If you compare Bilibili with Nico Nico (the Japanese website that inspired Bilibili), you'll find that Bilibili has nearly five times as many views as Nico Nico.
Look back in history
Stage I: before 2013 - The pioneers were experimenting and accumulating experience
Stage II: 2014 ~ 2016 - Several products stood out and succeeded, attracting widespread attention and more developers to join. (That was also when mobile games started growing rapidly in China)
Stage II: 2017 ~ now - Through self-publishing or working with experienced publishers, trying to be commercially successful in overseas markets as well
Year | Company | Product | Event |
2008 | MICA Team |
| Was founded |
2009 | Bilibili |
| Was founded |
2012 | MICA Team |
| Released an art design book portraying a world with the elements of girls + guns |
2011 | miHoYo | FlyMe2theMoon | Got app store featured in China, Japan and United States. The protagonist in this game became one of the main character in their Collapse Gakuen series later。 |
2012 | miHoYo |
| Was founded |
2012 | miHoYo | Collapse Gakuen | Released in China |
2013 | MICA Team | Bakery Girls | Released a SLG game with the elements of girls + guns, can be treated as a source of inspiration, or even a prototype of ì†Œë…€ì „ì„ (Girls' Frontline) |
2014 | miHoYo | Collapse Gakuen 2 | Released in China. With the help from Bilibili, this game became very successful. |
2015 | NetEase | Kai-ri-sei Million Arthur | Published in mainland China. |
2016 | miHoYo | Collapse Gakuen 3 | Released in China |
2016 | NetEase | Onmyoji | Released in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan. |
2016 | Bilibili | Fate Grand Order | Released in China |
2016 | MICA Team | Girls' Frontline | Released in mainland China and Japan |
2017 | MICA Team | Girls' Frontline | Released in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea |
2017 | Bilibili | Azur Lane | Released in China and Japan. |
2017 | NetEase | Onmyoji | Released in Japan, South Korea and Thailand |
2017 | miHoYo | Collapse Gakuen 3 | Released in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, SEA |
2017 | Bilibili |
| Established a “Chinese Original IP” section |
2017 | NetEase | Forever 7th Capital | Released in mainland China |
2018 | NetEase | Forever 7th Capital | Released in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. |
2018 | MICA Team | Girls' Frontline | English version released |
2018 | miHoYo | Collapse Gakuen 3 | Released globally |
2018 | Bilibili | Azur Lane | Released in South Korea |
2018 | NetEase | éžäººå¦å› | Released in mainland China |
2018 | Bilibili |
| The company is listed on the NASDAQ |
2018 | NetEase | Onmyoji | Released in Vietnam and English-speaking regions. Released on Steam. |
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