China’s biggest gaming convention, ChinaJoy, wrapped up this week, and although we didn’t get a chance to attend this year, it appears the convention is only growing. This year, the show attracted 162,000 attendees over its four-day span, and counting exhibitors and other participants, more than 197,000 people were there at some point during the show. Web games were a major focus (not surprising given that PC web games took in 23.5 billion RMB, or about $3.7 billion, in the first half of this year in China) and domestic original games were on the rise (also not surprising since the domestic game market share has risen ten percent since last year, to 71.6 percent). It has been a good year so far for gaming.
As big as the games were, a lot of discussion has centered around the role that “showgirls” — models hired to help promote games — are now playing in the convention. Many attendees say they’re visiting the convention for the girls, not the games, and models at ChinaJoy can apparently earn 2500-3500 RMB ($396-$555) per day. That’s more than what the average Chinese college grad makes in a month. QQ Games has a special section where gamers can rate and vote for their favorite showgirls. In a blog post by Meng Hong that has since run on Sina Tech, TechWeb, and a number of other Chinese tech news portals, the author talks to a showgirl to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the lucrative but difficult gig of game convention modeling.
But should there even be showgirls at a game convention? On the one hand, lots of people enjoy looking at attractive women, and sex is certainly an effective means of advertisement. Gamers are likely to leave with a favorable impression of a convention game if a number of sexy ladies are flirting with them while they play it, so it’s not too hard to understand why game companies hire models for shows like this. But has ChinaJoy gone too far? Has it become a model convention with games on the side as opposed to a gaming convention with a few models?
The answer, of course, is subjective, but the debate is being played out in comments forums across China’s gaming web. For example, one commenter on Sina Tech wrote: “Who would go to ChinaJoy without the showgirls? If you just want to play games, can’t you just find everything by searching Baidu?” “ChinaJoy isn’t a gaming convention anymore,” wrote another commenter.
As the market for games grows in China, ChinaJoy becomes more important as China’s foremost gaming convention. But does it need a change in direction? The answer to that is still up for grabs.
The post ChinaJoy 2012: Big Numbers, But is This Show About Games or Girls? appeared first on Tech in Asia.