China Joy – an E3 Diamond in the Rough

<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> Joy – an E3 Diamond in the Rough

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I just got back from my first China Joy held in the Expo Center of Pudong – the ultra modern new extension of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city>. Pudong itself was amazingly modern with a fabulous with its <st1:placename w:st="on">Fabulous</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Century</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Park</st1:placetype>, I had trouble reconciling the images of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region></st1:place> in my mind with the sights before more eyes.

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The Conference itself started off with a VIP event where the leaders of game companies around the world gave fairly straightforward and honestly boring speeches. No one took any chances with perhaps Pony ma of Tencent being the only one to actually say anything specific with a good over view of their strategy going forward. The main reason for the boring speeches is that no less than 10 different government ministries claimed “sponsorship” over the event and thus everyone was being watched very carefully to say just something nice for the newspapers.

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The China Joy Expo itself was pretty much like an E3 that drank too much and has come off unhinged. There were apparently no sound controls and everyone was just blasting the sound up to truly damaging levels. There was a portable McDonald’s setup in the expo center and the show girls were grateful to have the straw wrappers to squish up and make earplugs out of them. Electronic Arts was the only western publisher to setup a real booth and it was quite impressive with a wide array of the sports titles and the Sims2 line. Sony Online also had a modest booth with Gamania’s help.

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My overall impression of the show was a lack of innovation in the products from everywhere. All of EA’s stuff are the big sports brands, the big MMO guys were there with the9 featuring World of Warcraft with very well done costumes for their show girls. Besides dozens of diablo/lineage/ultima online clones there were now dozens of light-causal cartoon style MMOs all copying each other well. I feel like a grumpy old man, but I am having trouble thinking of any titles that I was excited about. Ah there was one – Joy XY that was presented on the back side of the9’s booth. Essentially it was a side-scrolling light MMO but it was quick and snappy and I loved the art – I wanted to play that game.

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From my friends I heard that this year was the first year that there were a lot of western game companies visiting, and indeed it proved to be a fruitful place for me to catch up with a number of my friends, and I am definitely coming back next year. I am hoping that next year’s event will be less shock noise and some innovation in gameplay.

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Originally posted on LiveJournal