Third stage: Self-development lacks originality

This September, Netease’s online game "Tianxia - II" started its public trial. At a press conference to launch the trial, Ding Lei said the well-known international game developer Blizzard could spend ten years making a product, but not one Chinese enterprise can do that, which marks the difference.

"The 5000 years of Chinese history and culture is the most precious foundation for the creative industr. We believe that one day in China, we will have great game companies which can compete with Blizzard or surpass it," said Ding.

This ambition became the tag line many big online game bosses used from 2005. It also became an important reason for those bosses trying to connect the online game industry with culture industry. In fact, on the Chinese online game’s income ranking list in 2008, the top ten games are all came under these three categories; "Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the west" and "knight-errant".

The similar categories reflect the shortage of creativity in domestic games, and the "No limit borrowing" starts to become a custom. The targets for "borrowing" has turned from overseas products to domestic work.

In June 2009, Wang Tao, the CEO of Changyou, finally decided to sue Unicorn net company for right infringement. This is because Unicorn net publicly tested its product "Genghis Khan", but "Tian long ba bu" which helped earn success for Changyou was very similar to "Genghis Khan".

Because Shang Jing, the founder of Unicorn net, and his team used to work in Changyou, this lawsuit became more complicated. .At present, Changyou has changed the damages fee from 1 yuan to 200,000 yuan.

From our interview we discovered that an online game should have completed several stages on its journey from a creative idea into being a product. The first stage is the script creation - creating the entire hypothesized world environment which is composed through writing and pictures, its process is similar to creating a novel; then, the second stage is the main program development, which involves displaying the result of the first stage onto the game engine using program language in order to make it look like a product. The third stage is the related trimmings like art, design and setting.

The first stage is the foundation of a product, the second stage reflects the "difficulty coefficient", and the third stage adds extra effect which perfects the product. The second stage can test the creative ability, which is also a key part that decides the quality of the game.

In general, China's history and culture had guaranteed a creative advantage for the Chinese online game industry. But the Chinese online game industry is still ‘too young’ in the second stage. According an insider, within the Chinese online game industry in 2008 the shortage of talented people like core programmers and senior host planers accounts for 70% of the total shortage of talented personnel across the whole industry. At present, lots of host planers for first-class online game products can get an annual income of 1 million yuan.

By People's Daily Online