How would you feel if your boss bought you the hottest video game on the market and gave you several days off work to enjoy it? 

This is exactly what happened when the extremely popular, Chinese-made game Black Myth: Wukong came out in August 2024. Many companies in China, including Sichuan Muziyang Technology and Shanghai developer Gamera Games, gave employees a day off to play the game. Many even bought the game for employees so they could fully enjoy the domestic masterpiece. More than 20 million copies of the first triple-A title were sold in a month. The meteoric rise of the game signals the temperature of the gaming market in China for 2025 and beyond. 

A market with 722 million gamers

There are an estimated 722 million gamers in China, taking into account PC, mobile, console and VR/AR gaming and esports. Mainland China alone has over 320 million PC gamers – roughly the entire population of the USA – according to The China Gamer Behaviour and Markets Report by Niko Partners 2024. The report surveyed 1,079 gamers in April 2024; 19% of PC gamers claimed they spent at least 30% more on titles than last year. 

China’s internet firewall blocks access to international gaming platforms like Steam. However, most gamers know how to use a virtual private network (VPN) to connect to the internet through a server in another country. As a result, despite the restrictions, Steam remains the most popular PC gaming platform in China, with nearly 80% of PC gamers using it for premium games. Additionally, there are about 50 million Chinese gamers living outside Mainland China who play on Western websites and apps.

The Chinese video games market therefore presents a significant opportunity for UK game developers. With the market expected to grow by 4.9% in 2024, reaching £38 billion, and projected to hit £43 billion by 2028, the potential for revenue is substantial. Mobile gaming is likely to continue to dominate, accounting for 68.7% of the market, followed by PC at 28.4% and console at 2.9%.

Gaming is a top revenue generator for the UK’s creative industries

In the UK, the video games market continues on a strong path of growth, reaching a value of £7.82 billion in 2023, a 4.4% rise from 2022, says UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), the leading trade body representing the UK’s video games and interactive entertainment sector. 

“The UK games industry is a global leader in creativity and innovation, with Chinese gamers playing a vital role in its international success,” says Sam Collins, Chief Commercial Officer, UKIE. “Their enthusiasm for UK-made games has driven significant investment from Chinese companies, which have established international offices here to leverage our exceptional talent and supportive regulatory framework. We look forward to deepening these connections and driving even greater growth together,” he says. 

How to market your video game in China 

London-based Oval Branding has been marketing British games to Chinese audiences since 2018. One of Oval Branding’s clients, Chatham-based Dovetail Games, is the world’s top simulation game company, with games including Train Sim World 5, City Transport Simulator: Tram and Fishing Sim World.

“At Dovetail Games, we take pride in being part of the UK’s vibrant and creative gaming sector, the leading contributor to the UK economy among all creative industries,” says Dan Holman, Director of Marketing at Dovetail Games. 

“As one of the fastest-growing markets, China presents an exciting opportunity for us. With the recent launch of Train Sim World 5, we are thrilled to have welcomed even more international and Chinese players into our gaming community,” says Holman.

Marketing Tip 1: Localisation and promoting Chinese cultural values

Localisation doesn’t just mean translating words accurately; it is about making sure the content fits the culture and preferences of the target audience. For example, launch dates might need to be changed because China is seven or eight hours ahead of the UK, so it could be the next day in China.

Games can use traditional Chinese art and music to create marketing materials that attract Chinese players. Social media campaigns can celebrate Chinese holidays and highlight values like community, family, and respect for elders. It is crucial that all content meets Chinese regulations and avoids any banned words or phrases, which are constantly changing.

An interesting example is Call of Duty, which added Chinese elements to the game, such as the use of weapons of the Chinese army and maps with Chinese characteristics. This has been extremely well received by gamers in China, with rave reviews on social media. 

Marketing tip 2: Short-form videos and influencers 

Short-form videos are taking the world by storm, and nowhere more so than in China. Forty five per cent of respondents in a Niko Partners report said they discovered video games by watching short-form content. TikTok’s Chinese equivalent, Douyin, has over 750 million daily active users spending an average of over two hours per day watching short videos and shopping. 

This gives gaming brands an invaluable opportunity to put their own short-form content in front of Chinese audiences, as well as to work with influencers (or KOLs, as they as they are known in China) to build brand awareness.

“You don’t necessarily need to find the biggest KOLs, just those that match your target audience,” says Shuangyang Zhao, Digital Media Manager for the KOL Steam Youxi @SteamGames, with 3 million followers across Douyin and Kuaishou. 

“We use a variety of techniques to market games, including live streaming. In addition, KOLs are increasingly sceptical about promotional videos, so it’s always better to give real gaming footage and game keys to try,” Zhao adds.

Marketing tip 3: Cross-promotions with non-gaming brands 

Cross-promotions with non-gaming brands can be a powerful strategy for raising brand awareness in China. By partnering with local brands and personalities, developers can tap into established customer bases and foster a sense of national pride. 

For example, during the promotion of Train Sim World 5 in September 2024, Dovetail Games collaborated with well-known Chinese train driver KOLs. This partnership added authenticity and visibility to the game, making the campaign a hit among Chinese audiences.

Another great example is Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Riot Games for the 2019 League of Legends World Championship. Louis Vuitton designed a bespoke travel case, prestige skins and other digital assets, blending luxury with gaming in a unique way.

These case studies highlight how cross-brand promotions can create buzz and drive engagement in the Chinese market.

The future of China’s gaming market

As the UK gaming market continues to show promising growth, with an annual growth rate of 9.57% expected to reach £9 billion by 2027, UK developers have a golden opportunity to expand their reach by targeting gamers in China. By using the tips in this article to market games to China, UK developers can successfully tap into the promising Chinese market and foster a global gaming community. Kaitlin Zhang is the founder and CEO of Oval Branding.

Kaitlin Zhang is the founder and CEO of Oval Branding.

The post How to Market a Video Game In China appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

It is no secret that China’s games industry is colossal, but there’s also a specific market within the games industry that is becoming too big to be ignored: e-sports. E-sports is the competitive element of video gaming, with amateur and professional competitions played in various games and genres. Since e-sports requires a player vs player (PVP) element, certain genres of game, mainly those with competitive multiplayer elements, are far more suited to having thriving e-sports scenes.

Some of the most popular e-sports games in China include the famous PC multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) League of Legends (LoL), mobile-based Honour of Kings, and the mobile battle royale Game for Peace, which is the official Chinese version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Tencent now operates all three of these games (Riot Games, which developed and published LoL in 2009, has been fully owned by Tencent since 2015), so they have a clear incentive to invest in the growth of the e-sports industry in China.

To give a little context on these game genres, MOBA games tend to pit two teams of five players against each other in matches that last an average of around 30 minutes. Battle royales, on the other hand, include up to 100 players in direct combat, and teams of four fight to eliminate one another until only one team remains. If you’ve heard of Fortnite, then you’ve heard of a battle royale game, with Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone being other popular options.

For an idea of how popular Honour of Kings is in China, data taken from China’s five largest live streaming websites showed that in 2021, a monthly average of 781,000 people streamed Honour of Kings gameplay, while an average of 1.8 million daily comments were made on the game’s broadcasts.

The development of e-sports in China

It is clear that the Chinese e-sports market is making waves, accounting for over a third of the global market. E-sports was first recognised by the Chinese government as an official competitive sport in 2003. However, this policy marked the start of a long and bumpy road for e-sports in the 2000s, with multiple policy u-turns and a lack of serious investment. That all changed in 2011 when Wang Sicong, son of the billionaire chairman of Wanda Group, took an interest. His investment in e-sports shifted perceptions of the industry in China, and soon investors were flooding in after him, sensing there was money to be made. It was in this period that many of the prominent e-sports teams in China were founded, including Edward Gaming (EDG) – winners of the League of Legends World Championships in 2021 – back in 2013.

Naturally, since e-sports needs video games to exist, the huge growth in the Chinese gaming industry during this period was also vital in fuelling the fires of e-sports and increasing its popularity. More major breakthroughs came in the late 2010s, largely in the form of further government support to match the substantial financial growth the sector was seeing, with e-sports becoming a university major available for study at over 50 Chinese universities in 2017, and e-sports operators and players both being listed as official professions in China in 2019.

A gamer playing League of Legends

Sizing up China’s e-sports market

Today, the most recent figures value China’s e-sports industry at over £17 billion in 2022. This figure represents a 14% drop from last year, but this doesn’t worry those familiar with the industry. Elaine, a professional e-sports broadcast host and a lecturer at Communication University of China Nanjing’s School of E-sports, puts this down to the pandemic-fuelled artificial, unsustainable growth that esports saw in 2020 and 2021. “People spent extra time at home, and gaming is incredibly accessible, especially mobile games, so more time and money invested on esports-related activities was completely normal. The decline last year also coincided with when the financial cost of two years living with the pandemic really began to hurt people, so consumption was down everywhere, regardless of sector,” she explains.

Despite this momentary dip, it’s clear to those in the industry that the growth in consumption in games, and therefore e-sports too, is only going to go one way: up. Many people point to the 2022 Asian Games, now scheduled to take place in Hangzhou in September 2023, as evidence of how much progress e-sports has made in recent years. For the first time on record, e-sports will feature as a medal event at the Asian Games, and China hosting such a historic event will not go unnoticed. Combine this with the return of other offline e-sports competitions and events now Covid measures have been relaxed, and 2023 is set to be a great year for e-sports in China.

Opportunities for international collaboration

The success of e-sports has not gone unnoticed by international businesses, and there are already huge levels of engagement with Chinese e-sports from companies outside of China. One well-known example of a British institution that’s seen success in China is Wolves. Primarily known in the UK for being a Premier League football team – aka the Wolverhampton Wanderers – Wolves have become associated with a different game in China. The club’s affiliated e-sports teams compete in some of the biggest leagues in the country. And they’re not alone: Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) sponsored Chinese e-sports team LGD Gaming in a move that saw the Chinese team rebranding to PSG.LGD.

Fan acquisition is a key driver of these moves – a fantastic way for brands and IPs to introduce themselves to an entirely new user base. This seems to have paid off so far for Wolves. On Weibo, one of China’s most widely used social media channels, Wolves’ football club account boasts nearly 650,000 followers, only less than the Premier League Big Six teams, Everton, and Leicester. However, their Honor of Kings account has over 3.3 million followers, so the football club’s profile in China is sure to continue growing.

E-sports is a natural area to expand into for football clubs or other similar IPs, for whom building the brand and gaining fans to boost their profile and viewership figures without necessarily making direct purchases is a valuable operation.

Still, for commercial brands, jumping blindly into e-sports isn’t necessarily a quick route to success, and thinking smart rather than being wooed by the numbers is key to finding a successful partnership in the e-sports sector.

Many of the most popular UK brands in China fit into the ‘premium’ category, including Burberry, Rolls Royce and Ted Baker. Yet the majority of e-sports fans in China are Gen Z students, meaning that they’re simply not the customer base that many British brands are targeting. This is where knowledge of the market is vital, as Elaine points out: “brands that focus on cheap mass consumption have the most to gain from traditional partnerships with the largest e-sports events, with KFC being a good example. Students who see a KFC advert during a broadcast of their favourite team may suddenly be inspired to get a takeaway, but what will they do if they see adverts for a car? It’s not relevant to them and they aren’t as likely to remember it, so you have to pick your market carefully”.

However, this is not to say that there are no opportunities for more upmarket brands. A potentially niche but smart partnership from Ferrari saw them sponsor an e-sports event for the NetEase game Fantasy Westward Journey. Interestingly, the game hasn’t garnered much attention outside of China – or even domestically – since it’s a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), which means there is more focus on the game’s world and story than the competitive PVP aspect.

Ferrari’s partnership with NetEase game Fantasy Westward Journey

So why did Ferrari partner with a game like this? The answer lies entirely in the user base. Fantasy Westward Journey has been live since 2001, and in the 22 years since, has gathered an incredibly loyal fan base, with the key being that this is an age group that started playing games as early as the 2000s. The average user age of this game is much older than more recent e-sports-orientated games, and vitally, they are much more affluent. The players competing in e-sports events for this game aren’t young professionals looking for a cash reward, but those with already established careers who are looking for a feeling of victory and success that money can’t buy. A light show above the Chengdu skyline orchestrated by hundreds of airborne drones and an illuminated message around Guangzhou’s famous Canton Tower are examples of recent methods used to congratulate the winners, and it is through these kinds of events that premium brands can reach their target market.

The outlook for British brands in China’s e-sports market

Sponsoring e-sports events, teams and players, or directly purchasing advertisements during e-sports broadcasts, aren’t the only opportunity available for British brands looking to gain from this huge market. It’s important to note that e-sports is a large industry with a highly complex ecosystem, so there are multiple avenues that British institutions can go down. For example, the growth of e-sports-related majors within universities in China could provide opportunities for British educational institutions with similar offerings. Whether it be attracting Chinese students to these e-sports-related courses in the UK or directly partnering with Chinese universities to offer joint courses, there are many areas where partnerships can be forged outside of the more traditional sponsorships and advertisements.

Another entirely different example comes from ILOVEDUST, a top-class British digital design studio that has worked on multiple projects providing design services to Chinese organisations in the e-sports industry. John McCulloch from the studio stated, “When you look at the scale of the esports industry now in China, it’s amazing to see. With viewing figures comparable with the Premier League and the NBA, it’s natural that such a big industry brings opportunities to us as designers”. There is little doubt that as this industry continues to grow so will the opportunities for British organizations.

The key takeaway is that, first and foremost, the e-sports industry is here to stay. Despite a slight blip in 2022, the predicted growth of the industry is massive, and those involved are all hopeful about the future. An industry of this size naturally creates opportunities for British organisations, but it is important to focus on quality over quantity. A targeted, focused partnership with clear goals is vital to achieving success in what is already a competitive market, so whilst organisations should definitely be considering where opportunities may lie, they should also manage expectations and make sure their research is as thorough as possible, as only then can they leverage this hugely complex market to their advantage.

Call +44 (0)20 7802 2000 or email enquiries@cbbc.org now to find out how CBBC’s market research and analysis services can provide you with the information you need to succeed in China.

The post The surprising opportunities in China’s e-sports market appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

1. Key Opinion Leaders will give way to Key Opinion Consumers 

Key Opinion Consumers create a better product circle

KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers) are individuals that brands have conscripted to sell and advocate on behalf of products. They help to ‘seed’ products into communities and groups they are part of – namely on WeChat – and then encourage group purchases. The goal in working with KOCs is to identify people within these groups who are already (authentically) talking about the brands products – and then, look to incentivise and support them further – to more vigorously advocate for the brand. By selecting individuals who are already advocates for the brand within small communities, the additional aim, is to have them stimulate user-get-user sales.

2. The answer to WeChat fatigue: Interest-based communities

Has WeChat’s growth peaked?

While ‘Super Apps’ (WeChat, Alipay and others) dominate and hold the largest share of Monthly Active Users (MAUs), they have become, by many accounts, too crowded, too noisy and too commercial.

Depending on the source of data, WeChat usage is either growing slightly or in decline. It might have peaked its capacity of attraction. For these reasons, there is something of a counter-movement growing, with audiences seeking more austere, clean environments where the focus is more on content and ideas, less on ads and e-commerce.

WeChat might have peaked its capacity of attraction. For these reason, there is something of a counter-movement growing

Several new platforms built around shared interests and community attracted attention in 2019. Tencent and Bytedance jumped (further) into this space in 2019, with Tencent-backed Jike, and Bytedance’s launch of Feiliao. Sina also offered up a new platform called Oasis which was designed to fit into this set of apps trying to (1) satisfy interest-based communities, and (2) create less commercial, more simple interfaces. None of these recent launches has had profound success yet, as perhaps they are not going far enough to satisfy audience needs.

3. Podcasts Turning Up The Volume

Podcasts are on the rise

Audio continues to prove that it has a strong place in the media mix. There are several trends that support an increase in audio-form (podcasts & narratives);

1. Audience burnout and overstimulation with video
2. The increasing effectiveness of audio-based AI (Alexa or Siri)
3. People are constantly on the go and too busy for appointment viewing of video

The Coronavirus might have delayed this shift from video to audio a little, as long commutes and time in the gym have been replaced by time on the sofa.

4. 5G will be the new frontier for long-form videos and AR

Augmented reality will help customisation

Bytedance has been stealing the limelight of long-form videos in recent years. The current completion rate for watching video ads on mobile is very low when compared with desktop, so the speculation is that 5G will improve the viewing experience on mobile – and viewership stats for ads. The feasibility of many Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality concepts will also be improved. So, keep an eye on these functions to make the most of the benefits of 5G:

– Mobile games and game streaming apps

– Traditional video platforms with quality, long-form content, such as iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video.

– Live-streaming sites

– WeChat and Weibo re-launching existing features such as Vlogs

5. Gaming And e-Sports

In-game advertising in e-sports will grow

Gaming and e-sports should become priority areas for branding in the coming years.

Several brand cross-over promotions have been very successful. Youth audiences in China are shifting their time and attention further toward video games. 2019 saw some notable brand collaborations in this space – including two from luxury brands (LV and MAC).

Instead of trying to make their own video games, brands should be looking into these sorts of collaborations, where they can tap into a hyper-engaged audience of fans and add value to the experience/environment of the game with product placements, virtual goods, e-Sports sponsorships or with co-branded (physical) products (such as MAC did with Tencent’s Honor of Kings game).

If you choose the right partner brand, this boost of awareness should come with the benefit of also gaining access to a new audience.

Download the full report here or contact Chris Baker, Managing Director of Totem Media

For more information on China’s creative sector contact Chris Lethbridge 

The post Five Marketing Trends for 2020 appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.