{ Internet in China: Online Gaming & "Gold Farming" }
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credits: shizukabazooka
According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the population of Internet users in China by last June is over 123 million — 63% of those people have broadband access. More that 20 million chinese play online games, and the e-commerce revenue have grown 50% in relation to last year numbers.
Estimates of the revenue of the online gaming industry points to a total of 1.3 billion dollars by 2009, an annual growth of 35%, according to IDC. Such growth ended pushing the numbers of other sectors up: online games brought 17.3 billion Yuan (2.14 billion dollars) to Telecommunication industry, 7.1 billion Yuan (887.5 million dollars) to the Information Technology industry, and 30 million Yuan (3.7 million dollars) to the Publishing industry.
Unlike american consumers — who usually pay US$ 50 to buy a new game — players in China, where software piracy is still an issue, are not willing to pay much for their games. Therefore, game developers have to come up with creative ways to generate revenue: according to Bill Bishop, CEO of Red Mushroom Studios, one of the fastest growning areas of the game business in China selling online gear for game characters.
The gaming culture in China is even creating new professions: in Liaozhong, colleting virtual items of online games has become income source for many young people. Even some of the most conservative estimates might say that these so-called gold-farmers bring in around 200 million dollars a year in this underground virtual items auctions industry.
The Internet in China: Online Gaming & "Gold Farming" by Itamar Medeiros, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.About this entry
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- Published:
- 10.18.06 / 7am
- Category:
- china, culture, e-commerce, economics, gaming, information technology, interaction, internet, software, trends, wealth
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