ChinaJoy Has Stopped "Selling" Cleavage, and Finally Looks Like a Normal Games Show

More and more people come to ChinaJoy just to play games, which is how it should have been all along.

The ChinaJoy that just closed sent a clear signal: China's biggest games-industry gathering wants to shed its reputation for drawing crowds with scantily clad show girls and vulgar hype.

The "strictest dress code ever" cost this year's ChinaJoy a lot of space in the entertainment pages, yet the show still drew more than 270,000 visitors over four days. On August 1 alone, attendance topped 80,000. Both figures are the highest in the show's 13 years.

With fewer people there to gawk at the girls, the games and the companies behind them have taken the stage again. This year ChinaJoy featured 3,500 games, roughly three times last year's 1,000 or so. The organizers also enlarged the area where players could try games, and the number of exhibitors grew from 550 last year to more than 700.

Several game companies we interviewed said this year's ChinaJoy was much "cleaner" than before: the events had more to do with the games, and the show felt closer to the industry and to players. On Weibo, posts about the show rose from 30 million last year to nearly 90 million this year.

More games, more companies, more visitors and more serious discussion, with less hype and fewer gimmicks: ChinaJoy seems to be growing more serious and more professional. That is also the right way for the show to keep building its value and influence. QDaily reporters spent the past few days on the show floor and at a number of events, and noticed some interesting changes.

Without show girls as a selling point, the games are the main attraction again

There is some irony in saying ChinaJoy now "looks like" a games show. It bills itself as the world's second-largest video game exhibition and has been held 13 times, yet the games have always been upstaged by the show girls' chests and legs. Search Google Images for E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) and you get pictures of the show floor; search for ChinaJoy and you get show girls.

This year ChinaJoy laid down strict rules. The most widely circulated, that cleavage must not show more than two centimeters, proved hard to enforce and was eventually replaced by rules such as: bottoms must sit above the hip bones, and navels must stay covered. The song-and-dance acts and show girls were not much fewer than in past years, but by every other measure, more of the people there really had come to play.

"It feels like there's less vulgar hype at ChinaJoy," Zhou Jianrui, a senior manager on Perfect World's mobile games projects, told QDaily. By vulgar hype he means activities and performances that have nothing to do with playing the games and rely purely on cuteness and bare skin to attract players. This year, hands-on play areas took up a larger share of many exhibitors' booths. Perfect World's booth, for example, had separate zones with different games for PC games, browser games, esports, mobile games, PS4 and Xbox. Letting people play is becoming something ChinaJoy cares about more and more.

Perfect World's booth, which even had "arcade machines"

Shen Xinhua, public relations director at Feiyu Technology, attended both this year and last year, and he noticed the change too. The small mobile games company, best known for Carrot Fantasy, did not exhibit this year, but more people got to know it at this ChinaJoy through a charity effort that handed out free Wi-Fi and bottled water. "Players are much keener on trying the games. Last year everyone was queuing for merchandise and that kind of thing," he said. In his view, exhibiting serves two purposes: letting players get to know the company's brand, and letting them learn about its new games. Feiyu Technology timed the release of Carrot Fantasy 3 to coincide with ChinaJoy.

Beyond hands-on play, more companies used livestreams of games, with commentary, to give visitors a sense of being in the action. In front of each exhibitor's stage, the biggest crowds and loudest responses often came not during performances or events but during livestreams of popular games.

Tencent's League of Legends and FIFA Online, KongZhong's World of Warships, Blizzard's Hearthstone: almost every competitive game was on show, with well-known professional players invited to play.

You often saw people with no idea what game was on the big screen stop, watch for a moment, and ask: "What game is this? How do you play it?" Newer game-streaming platforms such as Zhanqi and Douyu also came to the show. Many people could have watched the same videos at home in the air conditioning, yet chose to stand in the stuffy halls and watch the matches. The noise of the cheering crowd makes you feel part of it, and you get to see your idols with your own eyes.

Bullish on China's games market, the big foreign game companies all showed up

Michael Wu, who runs Blizzard's booth, was attending ChinaJoy on Blizzard's behalf for the sixth time, and the enthusiasm of Chinese players still startled him.

"By 8:50 in the morning the line was already very long," he said. "When we exhibitors line up at 8 o'clock every day to get into the hall and reach our booth, there are already players inside waiting, and they've brought their own little stools. I have no idea how they got in." Unlike exhibitors, ordinary players have to pass through a long holding area to reach the hall, and Michael Wu could only marvel at how fast they sprinted.

Blizzard's was one of the most popular halls at ChinaJoy. Besides a cosplay show and livestreams of Hearthstone, the booth brought Overwatch, a game not yet officially launched in China, and promoted next year's Warcraft movie: players could pick up different props and pose for photos with their favorite characters from the film.

Of course, everything meant queuing. At Blizzard's booth the wait started at two hours, and the whole aisle in front of it was packed with players who had stopped to join in. Many players even queued for hours just to try Heroes of the Storm, a game they can play at home any time. The only difference was a few cooler-looking mounts; the gameplay and content were the same.

To keep the booth's 24 machines running Overwatch working properly, Blizzard's senior technical director flew in from the United States and spent every day of ChinaJoy at the booth with staff, debugging and testing. In fact, more and more people like him are travelling from abroad specifically for ChinaJoy, and more and more foreign game exhibitors, like Blizzard, are taking the show more seriously.

Blizzard's booth was one of the most popular at this year's ChinaJoy

"Chinese players, being in their own country, may not feel that ChinaJoy is all that appealing, but it really is drawing more and more foreigners. Players and companies in Japan and South Korea, for instance, really look forward to it," Liu Wei, head of PR and marketing at Giant Network, told QDaily. Over the past two years, big foreign companies such as Microsoft, Sony, EA and AMD have all started exhibiting at ChinaJoy.

South Korea set up a Korea Pavilion at this year's ChinaJoy, where 35 Korean game companies exhibited. Even Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have begun to exhibit. Foreign players were eager to take part too. Some games, such as Overwatch, had not officially launched abroad either, yet were playable at ChinaJoy, which drew many foreign players to try them.

Naturally, Disney, the world's most accomplished manufacturer of happiness, came to this year's ChinaJoy as well. It had no formal booth, but it announced a slate of its most popular games at the show. Star Wars: Commander, a strategy game in the vein of Clash of Clans, has players gather resources to build their own bases in space and fend off invaders. The Marvel fighting series, a hit in the United States, lets you enjoy the thrill of the Hulk and Iron Man pummeling each other, just as in the films. The former will be co-published with CMGE, China's largest mobile game publisher, and the latter is published by Longtu Games. At its game launch event, Disney said it would work with more local development teams and make more games for Chinese players.

"China is already the largest games market, with 700 million mobile users. It is full of vitality, and every global game company needs to get into the Chinese market," said Kevin Chou, president of Kabam, the developer of Marvel Contest of Champions. According to a report by the games research firm Newzoo, the Chinese games market could reach US$22.2 billion and may overtake the United States as the world's largest.

With the ban lifted, many companies have set their sights on console games

With the console ban lifted, the major console makers all came to this year's ChinaJoy. Two of the world's three big console makers, Sony and Microsoft, had booths just an aisle apart. At the booths of other exhibitors, such as Snail Games and Perfect World, you could also find console play areas, and the queues there really were long.

"I walked around the booths this time too, and there really is more console and home entertainment," Sherry, marketing director at the Xbox booth, told QDaily. This was Microsoft's second time bringing Xbox to ChinaJoy. Last year Xbox had not yet gone on sale in China, and the appearance was only a warm-up. Now that China's 15-year ban on home game consoles has finally been lifted, Microsoft hopes to use the moment to introduce more people to console gaming.

"At ChinaJoy we hope to attract not only Xbox fans but also more people who want to learn about game consoles," Sherry said. "Many players may already play games that are on Xbox, just on other devices. We hope they'll try playing on a console."

Although game consoles have only just been fully legalized in China, there is no shortage of interested players

Both Microsoft's Xbox booth and Sony's PS4 booth announced a large number of new China-edition games this year. Sony said a series of Chinese-made games, including Chinese Paladin 6, would get console versions, while Xbox brought popular games such as Minecraft and Just Dance for visitors to try on site. Hardware restrictions kept Chinese consumers from ever forming a console habit, so the two makers hope to build domestic players' interest gradually, through the games.

Zhou Jianrui, however, thinks Chinese players need a bigger jolt before they take to consoles. "I think for console games to take off in China, there has to be a new hardware breakthrough, such as VR (virtual reality)," he said, looking at the PS4 consoles in Perfect World's area where people were trying Warframe. Perfect World has been building its console business for a long time, and its Neverwinter once ranked among the top five sellers on Xbox in North America. But he feels the ban left too long a gap, and players' habits will not change overnight.

VR fires the imagination, but a real breakout is still a long way off

Walk around this year's play areas and your eye is easily caught by players lost in games, wearing helmets or goggle-like devices.

These devices all rely on a technology called virtual reality, or VR. As the name suggests, the device makes the wearer feel present in a real world built by virtual technology. If you are playing a football game, put on one of these devices and you see a 360-degree stadium: you stand in the middle of the pitch, surrounded by teammates and opponents, while the roar of the crowd rises on every side.

The technology, first proposed in the 1980s, has come back into fashion with the wearable-device boom of the past few years. Its most popular uses include watching films, touring virtual show homes in residential and commercial property sales, and virtual travel online, but games are considered the most commercially promising.

VR is hot, but real commercialization will take time

The industry's most active companies all came to this year's ChinaJoy. Sony, a games giant, showed its VR headset Project Morpheus. Samsung and Razer also showed their own VR devices and offered game demos, and then there was the best-known of all, Oculus VR, which Facebook bought for US$2 billion. The queues for these devices were also noticeably longer than at most of their "neighbors."

VR devices were among the most popular attractions at this year's ChinaJoy, but don't expect these cool-looking gadgets to show up in players' living rooms any time soon.

As with much new hardware when it first appears, games that support VR are still a small share of all games. Take the best-known device, the Oculus Rift: hundreds of games now support it, but only about 20 to 30 of them give players a noticeably more interesting and exciting experience.

A big reason developers are reluctant to make games for these devices is that so few people own one. A new Oculus Rift currently sells for US$689 (4,278 yuan) on Amazon in the United States, about the same as a brand-new iPhone 6 (US$698) and twice the price of an Xbox One console (US$342).

VR devices from different makers vary enormously in specifications, performance and price, which makes for a fairly chaotic market. Add the need to strap this bulky device to your head, and it is no surprise that the vast majority of players won't pay for one.