The online crisis indicator - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs

Online gaming guru Marc van Chijs, CEO of the Spill Group Asia, analyzed growth of his online games. While picking up signs that an economic crisis is really bothering the Shanghainese, he found in the gaming figures some indication. In his weblog:

This week we were analyzing the traffic figures on our Chinese online game sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com, when we noted a strange effect. During weekdays there was hardly any growth on our portals, but on weekends the growth was similar to what we were used to. We looked a bit deeper into this and may have found a reason for this: staff in companies play less online games during working hours (normally we see a spike in traffic around 11:30 AM and from 4 PM onwards).

Why? Likely people are getting more afraid of the effects of the crisis and focus more on their work in order not to run the risk of being laid off. The effect started somewhere around November but seems to be getting more pronounced. I did not do any statistical analysis (and also do not plan to do this), but it seems like an indicator that some Chinese are changing their online behavior because of the crisis.

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Marc van der Chijs, also co-founder of the successful video hosting company Tudou, is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you are interested in having him as a speaker, do get in touch.

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