Be frank, I was not so sure why iGaming Asia Congress, the region’s leading event for the interactive gaming community is held in Macau every year. In my understanding of (online) gaming, it’s all about MMORPG, social games etc. So when I’m invited by the organizers, I was wondering, uhm… what Macau is to do with the online gaming industry and what’s the purpose of my giving a speech about mobile web?
Talked to a few attendees right after my speech, Capitalising on the next generation of smart/connected devices, I started understanding the local online industry. The attendees are mostly from local, Hong Kong, Philippine etc, and I feel like at least half of them are working on the same industry: online interactive games, i.e. online gambling and casual games. They are quite interested to know,
- how to access the social networks to reach more players? (surprisingly, a few of them mentioned Kaixin001 to me and know nothing about RenRen…)
- how virtual good and virtual money works in Chinese online industry; whether it is supported by government?
- whether it’s worthy of spending resource to launch a mobile version (either a mobile site or an application) and how.
I might be too rush to draw this conclusion, but the first impression I have right now is that Macau has a huge potential market for online gaming. Mainland Chinese companies, even international companies, such as social networks, gaming-related service, social (casual) game developers and mobile applications developers should look into it for interesting partnership and outsourcing projects.