At the end of last year, the official debut of Level Infinite marked a new stage in the globalization of Tencent games, and the signing of two high-profile mobile games, Avatar IP mobile game "AVATAR: Reckoning" and Kim Hengtai's two-dimensional new game "Nikke: Goddess of Victory", also made Tencent Games' global business begin to be paid more attention.
Recently, at the GamesBeat Summit 2022 event held by Foreign Media VentureBeat, Michelle Liu, CEO of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's international game business, talked about Tencent's global game business vision in an interview: to build a global game ecosystem integrating game development and distribution systems, and to explore the new world of the game industry with global developers and users.
Here's what Gamelook has compiled from the interview:
Liu Ming, CEO of Tencent Interactive Entertainment International Game Business
Build a global gaming ecosystem and tailor-made collaboration solutions
As a veteran game practitioner with more than 20 years of experience, after Liu Ming joined Tencent at the end of 2013, his main focus was on the mobile game publishing business, and he did not begin to lead Tencent Interactive Entertainment's international game business until 2019.
Speaking about Tencent Games' global game business vision, she said: "Our global game business vision is to build a global game ecosystem that integrates game development and publishing systems, and through the connection of R&D and publishing functions, this ecosystem can deepen our understanding of local users and better connect game content with users. For us, it's beneficial to create higher quality games, and then based on an understanding of user needs, and the exploration of new technologies, explore entirely new gaming experiences with partners and even users. ”
Liu Ming said that in the long run, games can bring more fun and positive energy to people's lives, and we still have a lot of room for exploration in terms of the meaningful impact of games on the world.
In the past, when it comes to Tencent Games' global business, many people may first think of a large number of successful investments and mergers and acquisitions, such as Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, supercell, a Finnish mobile game company, and Epic Games, the developer of Unreal Engine.
When talking about the choice of cooperation methods, Liu Ming said that helping global game developers achieve their growth goals is the original intention of Tencent to cooperate with global game developers, and in terms of cooperation methods, Tencent Games chooses a tailor-made cooperation plan rather than a one-size-fits-all model.
"We've built very good relationships with developers around the world, and our partnership is based on supporting our studios and partners to help them achieve their growth goals, so we've formed a vision of long-term collaboration with the studio, giving them the necessary support and creative autonomy to achieve those goals."
Each studio has a unique history and culture of game development, so we wanted to work together in a tailored way, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. We are very confident that Tencent has built successful partnerships over the past decade, especially with teams such as Riot Games, Supercell, Epic Games and others. ”
She also said that in these partnerships, successful collaboration cases are self-driven. The core teams of these companies know exactly what they want to achieve, whether it's releasing new IP, growing existing ONEs, or building new technologies. Tencent Games' roles are all about using its resources and expertise to empower and support developers.
Tencent Games can bring four capabilities to developers around the world
Liu Ming said that many of the teams tencent games have ambitions to build next-generation games and IP, which are more expensive and immersive than any games and IP they have created in the past, and Tencent hopes to help them achieve these goals through the various resources and capabilities they have.
In the interview, she also mentioned four aspects of tencent games' capabilities that can provide to game developers around the world:
The first is the R&D and operation capabilities of mobile games.
"A lot of our success in the Chinese market is due to the experience of mobile game development and operations, in recent years, we have partnered with more of the world's top IP to bring mobile game experience, as more and more games seek cross-platform, I believe we can help in this area."
The second is the ability to provide online services.
"For studios that build online service games, we have in-house experts to help build online operational plans, assess content production needs, monetization models, and so on, and these experiences can bring years of support to the game, and in some cases even decades."
Third, there is global coverage capacity.
"We can improve the global coverage of Tencent Games to launch new solutions in different regional markets, which is difficult for most developers to achieve on their own." A more specific example might be the release of Path of Exile with GTG (Grinding Gear Games) in the North American market, where we helped GGG achieve new highs in user volume through kol marketing collaborations, PR, and community resources. ”
Fourth, there is technical ability.
"Partner studios can get technical support and technology solutions from Tencent, such as IT infrastructure and data analytics solutions, and we are currently working with Funcom on Conan Exiles' data solutions to better understand user behavior and improve subsequent operational efficiency."
She said that Tencent Games hopes to work with developers around the world to create a production system that spreads around the world, "Based on our strengths, we are willing to work with all the best partners to build a better ecosystem and explore the new world of the game industry." ”
When referring to the new areas that Tencent Games hopes to explore, Liu Ming mentioned that at this year's GDC, Tencent AI Lab demonstrated the debut progress of AI+ at the conference, one is the application of AI to player teaching, and the other is the automatic game level generation of AI algorithms in "Glory of Kings", showing the role of AI in improving game experience and game production efficiency.
"With the help of new technologies, we can explore more. But from Tencent's point of view, I think we can give partners a lot of core capabilities support, such as GaaS, online operations, e-sports and other core capabilities can cooperate with partners. On that basis, I think we can do more collaboration on cross-platform production and region-wide distribution. ”
She said that cross-platform is the future direction, and eventually all games will go to cross-platform.
"Players want to explore more freely in the game, and certain platforms will limit the player experience, and I think it is the right direction to give users more freedom to explore the game experience." Among our partners, some may be better at PC and console game development, and some are better at mobile game development, I think both are very good, and the problem we face is to let them improve each other, empower each other, and move towards a cross-platform model. ”
Building a full-featured localization team, the pandemic is both a challenge and an opportunity
Liu Ming mentioned in the interview that games are always changing in the industry, users are changing, product content is changing, and the media is also changing, but there are always better opportunities for us to explore new models and new mechanisms that can be used.
"We are facing a lot of changes, and Tencent is also restructuring the global game business. We have a full-featured local publishing team to manage the publishing activities in each local market, which means that we pay more attention to local users, what they need, what they want, what they want, and what media they use to learn about the new game.
On the other hand, we also set up a function center at the headquarters to provide the regional team with existing service capabilities and additional support, including new ways to reach users through media and channels, so we can build a better operating system, better support users, so that they can contact game products more freely through more channels, in this regard, I think e-sports is a new thing, it can be used as a marketing channel, but also for users to bring creative content. ”
Of course, she also admitted that the epidemic has indeed brought different challenges to many local teams, especially when Tencent Games has a large number of new products and services to be released, the local team has encountered many challenges, but they have also made great progress with the support of the headquarters team.
For example, the recent PUBG Mobile tournament received positive feedback from users. I think during the epidemic, this is not easy, but it is more important to find new ways, for example, it is not realistic for some regions to hold offline e-sports events, but we can do it online and let users participate in e-sports through online forms. The wider the areas we explore, the more opportunities we will find. ”
In terms of gender ratio, the game industry is a male-dominated industry, as one of the few female executives in the world, Liu Ming gave three suggestions when mentioning how to balance family and life relationships:
"I believe that for all office moms, the balance between work and family is a challenge, if you want to share advice, the first thing I want to say is that companionship is the truest love, no matter how busy, be sure to take time to accompany the children, according to the different stages of the child's growth, your time investment may be in different areas, to ensure that you have time to accompany the child's most important growth moments, feel each other's love." 」
The second is to try to understand and support the children, we are all game practitioners, so there are more opportunities to understand the needs of the younger generation, so it is important to sit down and exchange ideas with them, and the communication attitude is best done in the way of a friend rather than from the perspective of a judge. Each child has unique gifts and potentials, so, believe in them, respect their personality and strengths, support their attempts and decisions, and let them make their own decisions.
Finally, I think it's important to communicate with your significant other, as a child's mom and dad, both of you may be busy, but try to understand and support each other, I think good family relationships can help better growth. ”
She said at the end of the interview that for Tencent, the global game business has just begun.
"We're still learning, we're trying to make everything clearer and better, but in the long run, we want to bring more energy to the game industry and users, and we believe that games are an industry with a lot of potential, and we can achieve a lot of technological revolutions and break boundaries, which is what we mean in the game industry." Everything we're thinking about and doing is exploring more with all developers and users to make the game industry more meaningful. ”
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