Game developer Samson Mow sees Shanghai as the ideal place to make an impact on the Chinese game industry, Eric Jou reports.

Originally from Vancouver, Canada, game developer Samson Mow always had a craving for something more, somewhere else. While Vancouver is a world-class city, Shanghai was the place he wanted to be.

"I kind of have an affinity for Shanghai. In Shanghai everyone's driven by more of that big city vibe," he says.

In 2011, Mow decided the time was right to do something new and Shanghai was where he wanted to do it. So he quit his job with Ubisoft in Chengdu and relocated to the city of his dreams.

"In big companies things move slowly and in every developer's life after a while you kind of ask yourself do you want to be safe and secure or do you want to be doing your own thing," he says.

Mow had decided the time was right to revive Pixelmatic, a startup company he had launched in Vancouver with two friends Cong Ly and Nat Mak. The company never really took off back then and was put on the back burner as the three went their separate ways.

But with his heart set on rebooting the company in Shanghai, Mow set about trying to persuade his friends to get back on board.

"He was very persistent. Every once in a while, he would get me into a conversation and then jump in and ask me when I was going to come to Shanghai," Mak says.

Eventually Mow convinced Nat to relocate to Shanghai. Cong runs operations in Vancouver.

Mow and his crew are now aiming to create a company big enough to complete and release games on a global scale. Their goal with their games, Mow says, is to create new social interactions, something he says they picked up in China.

"We see an opportunity to create a really social experience for players, and I think being in China has really influenced us with this," Mow says. "Take WeChat (China's most popular instant messaging app), with its social functionalities where it helps you meet new people. I think games have an opportunity to do all of those things.

"Games can be the context for people to make new connections and that's kind of what we're looking to do."

Their recent game, a mobile game, Gem Wizard was released on iOS, Android and Facebook across the world. Unfortunately because the game was built with Facebook integration, Chinese players lose out on the social elements of the game, as Facebook has been unavailable in China since 2009.

Pixelmatic's games Mow says are built to be "casual-core", meaning that the games are meant to be accessible and appealing to casual gamers while retaining elements that hardcore gamers will enjoy. Gem Wizard, a match-three style game, has many elements of casual-core. The game play is simple and addictive and with its collection and crafting system, it also has a level of depth. The game was first released in Japan, with the reasoning Japan's game market is more mature.

Pixelmatic is now hard at work on its next game, a science fiction-themed game. Mow says that the goal is to make a game that can appeal to worldwide audiences and sci-fi is something that is very popular in China and the West.

"I have to say that the biggest thing is that there's such a huge gap between what people are interested in. It's almost polarized between the Three Kingdoms and the fantasy-style games and Western games," Mow says.

"There doesn't seem to be that much of a middle ground where people are looking for an interesting experience or eclectic titles. It's either those big staple games or the top-rated Western games."

But with the video game market in China expanding and more gamers accessing mobile devices to play games, Mow thinks the growing market will have space for games that are outside the norm for Chinese gamers, which will also open up opportunities to take Chinese games and move them out internationally.

"There's a lot of knowledge that can be transferred to bridge the gap between Western and Chinese game development. It's key for China's future to be able to export games and entertainment products to the world. In order to do that we need to foster creativity, improve production processes, and, most importantly, focus on quality," Mow says.

Contact the writer at ericjou@Chinadaily.com.cn.

After a lot of convincing, Samson Mow (top photo, left) finally persuaded Nat Mak to move from Vancouver to Shanghai to restart their game company Pixelmatic. Photos Provided to China Daily

(China Daily 04/13/2014 page5)