Focus
The name of the game
By Wang Wen (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-07 10:57
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Song Yuxuan, a 23-year-old man who works in a bank in Beijing, has already been playing the board game with his colleagues for more than three hours. He plays as king and the others are trying their best to "kill" and overthrow him. The fight will continue deep into the night. The game named Sanguosha was developed from the Chinese tale the Three Kingdoms, and is a role-play board game in which participants can play different characters from the Three Kingdoms.
"It is a fantastic game and we even played the game for a whole night before our graduation," Song said.
The game requires at least four players and experienced practitioners tutor new players. Many people learn the game from their friends and then become fans.
Song said he learned the game from his classmates in June last year, when he graduated from university.
In the middle of last year, the game, which had been on the market for a year, was still a minority activity in the city and the cards could only be bought on the Internet.
In order to build up a large consumer group, the developer, YOKA Games, which was established by three university graduates in Beijing in 2007, used viral marketing.
Such marketing uses pre-existing social networks to increase brand awareness or achieve other marketing objectives.
Games that are both sociable and entertaining are ideal for viral marketing practices.
The viral marketing campaign was successful and word of Sanguosha swiftly spread.
YOKA Games also held several campaigns and competitions in some universities and companies in Beijing to promote the game last year, and since April last year, it has recruited agents in Beijing and Shanghai universities to sell cards for the game at 30 yuan per pack.
"My classmate introduced the game to me in May and it took me almost one hour to understand his introduction," said Wang Han, a postgraduate student in Beijing.
More than 400,000 packs of cards for the game were sold last year, involving more than 10 million yuan. Consumers of the game now exceed 10 million.
However, with success came piracy. Some pirate cards were discovered in May last year and from then on, the fight against piracy has been never ending.
A new action to clean up the pirates will be held late this year.
"We do not believe that one action can make the pirates disappear of course, but if we do not take any action, who in the business will?" said Du Bin, CEO of YOKA Games.
"We want to show our attitude to piracy and give the business healthy room for development."
The cultural creative industry in China is developing rapidly. According to a recent survey from Enfodesk Analysis International, income of the online game market in China reached 7,819 million yuan in the first quarter of 2010.
But compared with online games, board games are still in their infancy in China. According to statistics from Baidu, board games have attracted interest from Chinese since October 2008.
Board games still get a low recognition rate and the development of the board game industry will be mainly decided by the recognition it achieves in the market.
However, lack of originality is another problem facing board games in China.
At least one in three board game products is produced in China but the brands belong to other countries.
Some Chinese board game players feel imitation cannot be avoided in such early stages because the board game has developed for more than 50 years in the West. I
"The board game companies in China will still imitate the foreign products in the following years," Lei Xiaofeng, a manger with Huijia board game shop in Shanghai, said to China Enterprises News.