China, testing ground for online games - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs
by Fons1 via FlickrCrisis or no crisis, online games are moving fast, explains Spil Games Asia CEO Marc van der Chijs to Pacific Epoch how his company uses China as a testing ground for the world. The free games, that play for free for up to one hour, are tremendous popular in China.

The business model we have is focused on advertising revenue. We also work on a revenue-share basis to promote webgames and MMORPGs. I use China as a testing ground for new things. I think China is ahead of the rest of the world in terms of games. In-game items and the free-to-play model all originally came from China. Our first mobile gaming site worldwide was part of the Chinese website here. We also recently started a webgame portal. We run these games ourselves with our own payment systems and everything. Before, our portals were only advertising-based but now we use the pay-for-item model as well for our webgames.

Van de Chijs is very critical about the advertisement agencies, he mostly qualifies as "lazy". Spil's business model depends mostly on advertising and revenue sharing with other games and very limited in-game ads. Marc van der Chijs:

We do have in-game ads, but it is very limited still. In China, it is very difficult to find in-game advertisers because the advertising agencies are too lazy to sell these things. It's a small market for sure and they would need to invest a lot of time to do it. Even online ads are difficult in China because agencies just don’t want to sell them to their customers; it's easier for them to keep working with TV ads.

More at Pacific Epoch.

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Marc van der Chijs is also co-founder of the popular video-hosting company Tudou.com and speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him to explain how to do business in China, do get in touch.

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