On the evening of December 14, the 20th anniversary celebration of the China Game Industry Annual Conference and the China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition was held in Huangpu District, Guangzhou. The theme of this year's celebration is "Twenty Years of Wind and Rain, Together in the Same Boat". Since the first session was held in 2004, the China Game Industry Annual Conference has entered its 20th year. Looking back on the past 20 years, China's game industry has gone through ups and downs, from rise to explosion, and has achieved rounds of transformation and baptism in both opportunities and challenges. Over the past 20 years, the China Game Industry Annual Conference has accompanied and grown together with the game industry, silently recording the growth process of the industry like a clock. This celebration is a grand event for Chinese games, and it is also a milestone for Chinese games.
△ The scene of the grand ceremony
The 20th anniversary celebration witnessed the 20th anniversary of the changes in China's game industry
Back in 2004, the Chinese game market was just starting, and the South Korean-based online game "Legend" was still firmly occupying the domestic online game market...... It was also in that year that the first China Game Industry Annual Conference was held in Panyu, Guangdong, and every year since then.
Since 2004, Chinajoy and China Game Industry Annual Conference have become landmark events in the history of China's game industry development. If Chinajoy is a grand event for players, gathering from all over the world, then the annual meeting is an industry forum, where all the talents are gathered. Over the past 20 years, the exhibition has always accompanied the Chinese game industry, silently recording the growth process of the industry like a clock.
△为 二十周年庆生
It is worth noting that the first annual game conference released the "2004 China Game Industry Report", which pointed out that the sales revenue of the online game market reached 2.47 billion yuan, and the number of online game users in China reached 20.25 million at the end of 2004. Since then, the Report has continued throughout the previous industry annual conferences and has become the most authoritative industry report in China's game industry.
In 2023, also in Guangdong, the 2023 China Game Industry Annual Conference, hosted by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and undertaken by the Game Working Committee of the China Audio-visual Association, will arrive as scheduled, bringing an annual event to Chinese game industry practitioners.
The release of the "2023 China Game Industry Report" also brought a gratifying report card: After 20 years of development, the revenue of China's game market has increased from less than 3 billion yuan that year to 302.964 billion yuan today, breaking through the 300 billion yuan mark in one fell swoop. The number of users has grown from 20.25 million to 668 million, reaching a record high.
Over the past 20 years, China's game industry has gone from rise to explosion, achieving a round of transformation and baptism in both opportunities and challenges. In the witness of the exhibition and the meeting, with the support and watchfulness of the competent authorities, Chinese games have changed from the "two-person transformation" of online games and stand-alone games to the era of mobile games, console games, client games, etc., and the Chinese game market has also transformed into the world's largest game market.
From germination to rise, Chinese gamers have been on the road for 20 years
In the "China Game Industry Annual Conference, China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition 20th Anniversary Celebration" held on the evening of the 14th, there were many familiar figures among the participants. For example, Yang Nanzheng, the founder of China's first game "Condor Commando", military researcher, and Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, etc. Many of them are promoters, witnesses, and witnesses of the development of China's game industry. The growth of Chinese games into the world's largest game market is inseparable from their persistence and hard work.
In the past 20 years, Chinese gamers have not taken a broad road, but a bumpy journey full of thorns. In the initial stage of China's game industry, the production of games can be said to be facing the dilemma of "internal and external troubles".
If you turn the clock forward and go back to the 90s of the last century, the Chinese game market at that time was once labeled as a "piracy paradise" by the outside world. Because of the relatively weak economic strength and the weak awareness of copyright, pirated games were once rampant. Only a small percentage of gamers have developed the Xi of buying genuine games, genuine game consoles and hardware. Even with the emergence of domestic games such as "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "The Legend of Jin Yong's Heroes", the losses caused by piracy have made it difficult for most games to achieve commercial success, which has made many game producers with game dreams frustrated, and the germination of domestic games is in jeopardy.
In the global market, thanks to the first-mover advantage and technological development of foreign companies, American and Japanese games with exquisite production and excellent graphics have firmly occupied the global market, and China is no exception. What is even more difficult is that for most Chinese, the world that belongs to 0 and 1 is extremely strange, and if you want to completely develop a game, China needs to catch up more and farther.
Born in 1993, Condor Commando was the first game in China, and its founder, military researcher Yang Nanzheng, recalled the process of making the game back then: "At that time, how could making games be like now, you know, it was difficult to find a programmer back then. ”
Chinese players enter the game market, and the dazzling array of games on the shelves are always from the United States and Japan, and players cannot find a domestically developed game. "Can you make a domestic game sell better than a foreign game, and can you make money by avoiding piracy?" is a question hovering over the heads of Chinese game producers.
In the face of the "internal worries" of rampant piracy and the "external troubles" of foreign exquisite games, some Chinese game producers who dared to "eat crabs" stood up: they decided not only to make domestic games, but also to make successful Chinese games. Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, is one of them, and he has always had a dream of making online games. But he also understands that with the level of technology at that time, it was not easy to make online games.
In order to accumulate relevant experience, Ding Lei went to Silicon Valley in the United States in 2000 to try to represent international popular online games, but was rejected by the other party on the grounds of "piracy issues". It was in 2000 that after seeing the popularity of the movie "Journey to the West", he decided to use "Journey to the West" as the theme to produce the online game "Journey to the West" of the same name.
"I made online games to prevent piracy, and I originally thought that as long as I didn't lose money, it would be fine. Ding Lei said calmly. But this "just don't lose money" game has surprised everyone and achieved extraordinary success after its launch.
With the success of Ding Lei's "eating crabs", practitioners in China's game industry have followed suit, and self-developed domestic game projects have sprung up. After this watering, the germ of domestic games has finally been able to thrive, and the development of China's game industry has also turned a new page.
More than games, more than innovation
Nowadays, China's game industry has not only achieved the growth of revenue and user scale, but also with the launch of projects and projects such as the national special campaign against piracy and the high-quality game, China's game market has not only taken off the label of "piracy paradise", but also the game products have become more diverse, more diverse and more high-quality. In the early days, Chinese games focused on entertainment, and with the development of the industry, various attributes of the game industry have been stimulated, and the attributes of games are no longer limited to entertainment.
The innovative development and application of technology in the game industry has had a huge impact on the whole society, and while the game products continue to iterate and progress, game technology has quietly been deeply integrated with the cutting-edge technology field, driving the coordinated development of AI, chips, cloud computing, autonomous driving, aerospace and many other fields.
In the field of cultural communication, the communication advantage of games is becoming more and more significant. The new generation of Chinese game creators are constantly drawing nutrients from the treasure house of Chinese culture, using games as a carrier to spread Chinese culture to the world and convey Chinese voices.
Because of this, as an important part of the 20th anniversary celebration, the "2023 Top 10 Game Annual List" not only rewards outstanding game products, game companies and game R&D teams that emerged this year, but also sets up awards such as the Outstanding Game Technology Innovation Enterprise Award, the Outstanding Social Value Game Award, and the Outstanding Chinese Traditional Culture Game Award. Encourage the game industry to continue to shine in the whole society and in all fields.
"We have crossed the threshold of 20 years together, 20 years ago may have been on the ground, now we can say that we are handsome young people, we are adults. Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee, said in his speech at the 20th anniversary celebration, "The game industry can grow so much today because we have taken a correct path, a market economy path based on the premise of satisfying social effects. Now that 20 years have passed, how will the game industry go in the next 20 years, the game industry will continue to innovate firmly, because innovation is not necessarily high-quality products, but high-quality products must be innovation. ”
The results of the 2023 Top 10 Games Annual List
Excellent game technology innovation enterprise: NetEase Games
Excellent "going out" game company: Shanghai Lilith Technology Co., Ltd
Excellent game R&D team: Xishanju Game Studio (Zhuhai Kingsoft Digital Network Technology Co., Ltd.)
Excellent game operation enterprise: Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd
Outstanding Mobile Game: "Crystal Nucleus" (produced by Morning and Night Lightyear)
Excellent client game: "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" (produced by miHoYo)
Excellent Social Value Game: "I Am an Astronaut" (produced by Boke Technology)
Excellent Chinese Traditional Culture Game: "There Are Homes in the Depths of Taoyuan" (produced by Suzhou District 51)
Outstanding Game Music Design: "Ark of Tomorrow" (produced by Eagle Point Network)
Outstanding Game Art Design: "Return to the Dragon Tide" (produced by Shanghai Fun Orange)
Modern Express + reporter Qiu Huayue
(Proofread by Ji Linqiao)