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The 2006 Taipei Game Show
Ryan Joseph Hudson wrote to mention his impressions of the 2006 Taipei Game Show. The article on his LJ is full of photos of the event, and some fairly cynical commentary on what was offered by the exhibitors. From the article: "I don't know what I had in mind, walking in there. I thought I'd see some new games, I guess. And I did. Unfortunately, they were all in Chinese. Sony and Microsoft tried to make a showing. That didn't work. Local companies, Chinese companies, Korean companies, and this guy all stole their thunder. I should hasten to add that there was also a World of Warcraft display. This included a giant World of Warcraft Tour Bus and a giant inflatable orc. The orc was anatomically correct. Still all of these foreign companies made a weak showing. They weren't on their home turf and it showed."
Mmm, booth babes. I've gots the yellow fever.
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"This included a giant World of Warcraft Tour Bus and a giant inflatable orc. The orc was anatomically correct."
what, no pictures?
I don't know what I had in mind, walking in there. I thought I'd see some new games, I guess. And I did. Unfortunately, they were all in Chinese. Sony and Microsoft tried to make a showing. That didn't work. Local companies, Chinese companies, Korean companies, and this guy all stole their thunder.
Why?
And he got kicked out, and just walked back in. Funny stuff.
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An orc has genitals shaped like a Chinese male's head? Cool....(see photo)
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"How sad."
reading the synopsis alone it appears he got the point across.
And isnt the Chinese govt horribly repressive against video games and foreign influences? so is it really a suprise that there wasnt much there?
I like how the gist of the article is that he got high with the Microsoft rep. and thrown out.
...where is the foot :It's funny... laugh" icon on the top. This is like a Hunter S. Thompson report, but without the good writing of Thompson. I mean this thing is just about a guy who doesn't know the language walking around drinking and doing drugs in Taiwan. Where is anything about the games at the show at all? Why was he disappointed about Nintendo when he didn't seem to give a shit about anything happening at the show?
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I'm sorry but any article that has this:
The sales representatives were hitting me up for speed. Two of the girls, the two from Japan, I think, were huffing rubber cement behind one of the kiosks. One guy I tried talking to, who seemed a bit disoriented and was prone to talking really fast, started laughing so hard that his nose began to bleed when I asked him if he thought the Xbox360 would be successful in Taiwan.
Is definitely worth a read.
Doing whip-its with microsoft marketing?
This is the funniest shit I have read in a while.
A blog about stuff.
Couldn't help being reminded of the movie, with the booze, drugs and madness :)
Yay for Gonzo journalism!
Mark Kretschmann - Amarok Developer, KDE Member
I'm a big fan of my Playstation 2 and have been holding off on a "next gen" purchase until more concrete details of the PS3 start coming to light. I was hoping this would be the show that does it, given the large area of floorspace Sony gobbled up. I must say it's rather disappointing to hear nothing -- again.
At this point I'm tempted to get a 360 instead, simply because it's out and I can see what games are like for it. I'd hoped the PS3 would be a bit more, you know, THERE by now, but if we have to wait until E3 or later before seeing hands-on gameplay for the first time it's probably not going to bode well for the quality of the console and its launch titles.
I mean being secretive and all is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
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This guy writes like he saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and now Hunter S Thompson is his writing hero. Unfortunatley, he doesn't have the talent needed for that style of writing. Basically, he got high and went to a trade show.
D
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It's not surprising at all that Sony and Microsoft didn't have much of a showing. From my experience in Taiwan no one really cares much for consoles. For the most part they don't have the disposable income that Japanese do, and those that do generally aren't into gaming. If they're going to spend money on something, they're going to invest in a machine that does more than just play games. They're also more technically inclined than the Japanese are. A Japanese person normally wants to plug something in and have it running straight away. A Taiwanese guy, on the other hand, likes to be able to tinker with their machine.
Hence the popularity of consoles in Japan and the overwhelming popularity of PCs in Taiwan. Inevitably, developers focus on PCs. One big advantage is that the development costs are lower and there isn't all that licensing nonsense that console developers have to deal with.
So the big thing has been RPGs and especially MMORPGs designed with the isometric, Diablo-style look. There are a couple of 3d games out there, but given that not everyone is running the kind of hardware we get here, and it's far worse in China, they need to ensure these games are playable on slow machines. Taiwanese are in a better situation to develop games that appeal to the Chinese market than most others since they have a better understanding of what appeals there. And since they pretty much go wherever they think they can earn money, they've gone nuts developing for the Chinese market.
There have been a number of Korean games which have been very popular, and it's my understanding that the Korean market isn't vastly different. World of Warcraft has also been very popular, so has Starcraft and a few other RTS's for that matter. In Taiwan, like South Korea, a lot of these guys go to gaming cafes.
As for Sony not releasing the PS3 because of concerns of piracy, thats just nonsense. I don't think anyone would care enough to pirate games for that console and most pirated stuff is coming from Hong Kong, and probably originally from China. The problem with the PS3 is that it just isn't going to sell very well. The PSP sold for a while because it was trendy and people expected it could do more than just play games.
As for this guy who visited this show, he reminds me of the kinds of idiot foreigners I used to see when I was living in Taiwan. It's embarassing and they give the rest of us foreigners a bad name.
But that show is pretty much what I expected from Taiwan. They call it international, but it excessively emphasizes the local market, it's a bit haphazard and the Taiwanese companies don't understand the first thing about having a good brand identity, nor are they willing to spend a cent on it. But that's a whole other story...
I don't know what I had in mind, walking in there. I thought I'd see some new games, I guess. And I did. Unfortunately, they were all in Chinese.
Of course they were all in Chinese, what did the author expect? French? Like 95% of Taiwan speaks Mandarin Chinese... the other 5% speak Taiwanese or Hakka.When I was working in Taiwan, I hung around with a few of the guys from Microsoft and we used to joke that the only reason M$ was even in Taiwan was to get cheaper booth babes for US events because of all the rampant piracy that M$ faces in Taiwan and how dismaly the XBox did/does/will do there.
I remember when XBox launched in Taiwan - wow what a show M$ put on. Dancing girls, laser lights, loud rock-n-roll late into the night. They convinced the city to run the trains later than usual to accomodate the crowds -- and yet, with all those thousands of people that showed they sold very few actual consoles.
The reason being is that in Asia the gaming market is far more developed than in the US. So the author shouldn't have been looking for familar US brand games, but instead looking to see what is new out there from the Asian gaming houses. Assuming everywhere else is like / wants to be like America is where too many Americans go wrong overseas.
* Taiwanese wages are significatly lower than American wages.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
The only reason Taiwan cannot be listed as a sovereign entity in most international organizations is because of PRC-kowtowing, money-grubbing, unimaginative, uninformed, and spineless yesmen who run around citing state-written "factbooks" that are completely at the whim of history and Chinese (that is, PRC) bully tactics.
Look in a similar factbook 35 or 40 years ago and I bet you'll find that it said very different things about the status of "China" and/or "Free China", not that you're either old enough to remember such a drastically different geopolitical environment or thorough enough to bother getting off the internet for some real fact-checking.