Zhang Zhihong, the head of the games subsidiary of Kingsoft Software Co Ltd, is troubled by one thing - lack of qualified talents - as his company tries to become one of the biggest games developers in China.

Kingsoft, a major player in office software, released its first online game software - The Love Story of a Sword Master, in July, vowing to make 250 million yuan (US$30.19 million) in one year and attract 100,000 simultaneous players.

At the same time, the company plans to expand its number of games from the present 140 to 300 by the end of the year.

"Although we have trained some talents during the past eight years, we may have to recruit qualified developers from South Korea," said Zhang.

Kingsoft and Zhang are not alone in worrying about the shortage of game software developers in China.

Zhao Jinmeng, a researcher with the Beijing Software Industry Promotion Centre, believes a lack of software developers has become one of the crucial problems that Chinese game software firms face.

"In the past years, the game industry was ignored and nobody wanted to invest in training game software professionals, but now with the industry growing rapidly, it is difficult to find good developers," Zhao said.

He estimated that there are about 100 game software companies, which are mainly engaged in developing Internet-based software, but there are only 1,200 people working on game software design and programming.

Zhao said the digital entertainment industry including games, movies and cartoons in the Chinese mainland may need 150,000 professional talents, but there are only 8,000 people available.

In comparison, Taiwan Province has 3,000 game developers among its 23 million population.

According to US-based information technology market research house International Data Corporation, China's online game market almost tripled last year to 910 million yuan (US$110 million) with 8.07 million game players, including 4 million paid ones.

IDC predicted that the market would grow to 8.34 billion yuan (US$1 billion) in 2006.

Qian, a teacher at the software college of Peking University said his college would admit 100 students annually for a master's degree in digital arts from this autumn.

Software colleges in Shanghai Jiaotong University and Southwest China's Sichuan University are also expected to start master's courses this month.

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