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When you look beyond Korea, which is just a small country in East Asia both by population and land area, there exist no other countries in E Asia that Starcraft, or more broadly, RTS games are popular.
Recently I am trying to promote Starcraft 2 in my city, so I made casting on youtube, I made a forum; both in local language (Cantonese).
However, I feel I am just wasting my time. Almost none of the gamers here know what an RTS is, let alone Starcraft. I asked people what they play, they told me they play "online games". And by asking further, I find out what they mean by "online games" is actually those Chinese MMO game. While this mainly apply just to Hong Kong and China, I am pretty sure RTS is not popular in Japan, Taiwan and Singapore as well. (Yes there are SC players from China, but when you divide that by population, that's as little as the % of people who have climbed Mount Everest.)
Let me explain more, for most of the TLers are not from the "sinosphere" culture and may not understand the challenge:
Unlike in the western culture, where playing PC games are considered "nerdy" or "not cool"; it is not really a problem here. The problem is actually on the other extreme, parents discourage you from focusing on sports, and a lot of youngsters (guys) simply love to go shopping for their Gucci and Louis Vuitton "schoolbags" instead. Who wants to be a sports star if girls like this? Real man want to have smooth white skin and a cute face, I am willing to bet a mothership that there are more guys wearing cosmetics than guys playing soccer.
Many youngsters do play video games, including PC games, but RTS is way too difficult and no one has the patience for that kind of learning curve. Popular games are dancing games (only need to press "up, down, left, right and space bar") and easy but pretty MMOs. Games like WOW are too difficult as well, MMORPGs in east Asia actually does not have the RPG part, and many players use bots/Chinese farmers to train up their own character. One to two characters are usually enough for boss fight as long as you pay enough real money for items. (That is why free to play model is dominating.)
Even if you can get them to play RTS game, like Warcraft 3; nobody play ladder games. This is same everywhere, just more extreme in Asia; since most people do not even know the existence of battenet! (When you ask people playing war3 in cybercafe, 95% will not know what the heck is Bnet.) Of course you will not play normal ladder matches if you do not know there is a Bnet! (They use pirated copies.)
DOTA is also not popular, for the same reason of steep learning curve. We have a localized dota version "Nobunaga's Ambition " that is popular in Chinese speaking countries. Again, people have no idea that dota exist and who the F is Nobunaga. The funny part is that the focus is not balance, but "heroism"; since you can defeat 5 players if your one hero is strong enough (it indirectly promote selfishness instead of teamwork)
There are other reasons as well, but it is for another time as it can goes into pages...
If there is no more younger, next generation players joining, there is no hope for a professional community to exist. Most of the older players from SC1 are almost White-Ra's age, which cannot "last long". I still fail to find a good way to promote the game and make it appealing to new players.
How can I find new players for starcraft 2 in this environment? It's so frustrating. I start to feel I am old when I promote SC2... Thanks for reading this wall of text, it may just be my bias and my frustration. It's better now that I have write it out.
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I think what your trying to achieve is commendable.
Perhaps try showing them how much ass bisu gets?
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I appreciate your efforts! ^^
My friend was just telling me today how MMO's are huge in japan T_T
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
So how did you find out about starcraft?
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
Blizzard might choose to not advertise in countries like Hong Kong or Japan where RTS games are not popular.
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On July 22 2010 16:34 T.O.P. wrote:Blizzard might choose to not advertise in countries like Hong Kong or Japan where RTS games are not popular.
You better help me out, haha.
Are you buying Chinese of English version?
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If this is about RTS games why would you then promote SC2
(which everyone can see has its flaws + its too easy + made by activision blizzard which everyone one knows is as greedy as you can get it)
instead of SC1, where everyone can see is a perfect example of an RTS game, the difficult level is what makes this games fun to watch and its free.
Here is an analogy:
You meet this caveman and you want him to live back into society, so you show him a place where there are laws and a working civilised city. You show him P'yŏngyang. Wait what?? no dont do that, show him a city like Barcelona or Budapest ^^ - like show him teh awesome stuff :D
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l think there is a pretty decent following in Singapore, although Singapore itself is such a small country that it doesn't make much of a difference to the player pool. At least, I know that DOTA is/was very popular in SG and also Malaysia...
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On July 22 2010 17:07 FuRong wrote:
l think there is a pretty decent following in Singapore, although Singapore itself is such a small country that it doesn't make much of a difference to the player pool. At least, I know that DOTA is/was very popular in SG and also Malaysia...
Yes, actually the situation I describe is only in China, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong...
SEA is a completely different place culturally. I actually quite like Malaysia, it seems that people are more sporty, active and happy there.
East Asia is too influenced by Japan...
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@exeexe -- "difficulty" is apparently exactly what doesn't appeal to the Chinese populace, if you actually read the OP.
@darkwindHK -- you're best-off easing them in to it, emphasizing how easy it is to jump in and play the campaign, and the cool and various custom games. On the wayside you could point out that there is a really competitive Professional one-on-one scene that is fun to watch, which might encourage them to later practice the basic game.
Seems like your audience wants to play video games for their traditional value: killing time and unwinding, having a bit of fun. Appeal to that. This game is fun, easy to get in to, and has a ton of replayability.
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It's about making them see it's more than just ONE character, one hero doing everything... and that's going to be basically a difficult ladder to climb because of the reactionary stance towards "the team" that the culture promotes.
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I had a billion questions for you, but I guess I'll just stick to one for now. Why are you trying to do Activision-Blizzard's job for them?
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because I love to play starcraft.
And you know what I have NOT seen even ONE game magazine in Hong Kong advertise for Starcraft 2. NONE. Blizzard have given up this market.
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EPT
