Upping the game, on the world stage

Zhang Hao, the co-founder of Lilith, said that being based in a city as cosmopolitan as Shanghai has its advantages as the city is home to all kinds of resources vital to the development of a gaming startup.

"The world's leading game companies usually choose Shanghai as the first stop when they come to study the Chinese market. The mature capital market here can address financing problems and the establishment of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone has facilitated the outbound trade of games," he said.

"The localized review of games published in Shanghai, which took effect in 2014, has also shortened the review period by up to three months, which is the crunch time for most startups," he added.

Blizzard Entertainment, one of the world's largest gaming companies that developed the Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft franchises, has an office in Shanghai. UbiSoft, the creators of the massively popular gaming series Assassin's Creed, has also set up shop in the city.

According to the Shanghai Game Publishing Industry Report released in July 2016, the turnover of online games across all platforms in Shanghai reached 49.93 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) in 2015.

Meanwhile, the income generated by games developed by Shanghai companies was 38.64 billion yuan. Game exports were on the rise as well - $695 million worth of games made in Shanghai games were sold in overseas markets, up 31.6 percent year-on-year.

Some of China's biggest gaming companies, including Shanda Group, Giant Network and Youzu Interactive, are based in Shanghai too.

Established in 1999, Shanda became the first Chinese gaming company to complete an overseas acquisition in 2004. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2009 and acquired the US flash game platform company Mochi Media for $80 million a year later.

In 2015, Shanda started to explore the overseas mobile games market by merging its three companies in South Korea. In the same year, income from the overseas market accounted for 20 percent of the company's total turnover. By the end of 2018, overseas income is expected to hit 40 percent of the company's total.

Giant Network went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2007 due to the success of its games under the ZT Online Series. Early last year, the company announced its plan to set up a 770 million yuan overseas operation and distribution platform within the next four years.

Youzu Interactive started to reach out to the global market in 2008 with its game Goddess League, which was the first Western webpage game developed by a Chinese company. Last year, Youzu announced its acquisition of German game developer Big Point to strengthen its overseas expansion in the US and European markets.

shijing@chinadaily.com.cn