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[mooosh]

as

[Player 3]

One thing to keep in mind is about Korea (south). You can't release a game to the public, even freeware, without having it rated. If you go along the stereotype's road, then they'll be too busy playing Starcraft to make their own stuff.

[Golds]

Interestingly enough, Tim W of the indiegames blog is based out of Malaysia.

[Nix]

Japanese gaming communities tend to be pretty self contained and in their own secret section of the web. I remember a thread like this earlier, but I can't recall what it was titled or what it was about. In china, and perhaps I'm generalizig a tad too much, the culture doesnt really reward innovation or creativity as much as following the rules really really well, so being able to make it there as an indie game developer would be difficult.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

I guess English has become a very international language. If you look at the spread of nationalities on this site I'd think you'd be surprised at how many countries indie devs come from. I think a lot of younger people around the world have a fairly good grasp of English, usually good enough to participate in forums, and definitely good enough to read an English-language game.

I was going to say that indie games tend to be monolingual because indies can't afford official translations. But actually most indies probably have numerous multilingual friends and contemporaries. Perhaps they never thought to ask! ^^;

[longshot]

Gaming is really big in China.  WoW in China has some multiple of the number of subscribers in the US.  I think it's around 4x.

Generally speaking, Chinese tend to be more receptive of western games that the Japanese.  Especially anything made by Blizzard. DoTA is insanely popular here.  Also, the is a large fan translation scene.  I think I saw the first Chinese language patch for Dragon Age about a week after it was released.

There are indie developers in China.  The team that invented the game that Farmville/Farmtown ripped off, Happy Farm, was an indie team at first.  It was also, humorously, responsible for getting a government official fired, due to him spending too much time making sure no one was stealing his crops. 

The reason you don't hear about them is mostly because of the language barrier.  In the future that will likely change, as more Chinese gaming companies try to enter the western market.

[Booger]

Most Japanese can't speak English, so they go along in their own small doujin scene.

Single-player games are dead in China, and most indie games are single-player.  Confucian culture also rewards practicality, that's why people there would rather make another clone MMO with gambling-style mechanics.  The most talented indie Chinese devs did not make their break in China -- they're mostly in the US.

As far as I know I've been talking to plenty Indian devs lately, so that's no problem.

If they can speak English, they will gather to this or other sites centered around game-making.

So there's no need to worry about 'missing out' on any particular scene -- eventually somebody will translate a memorable non-English game and bring it over.

[zede05]

As far as China's concerned, the concept of indie is a bit different. The investment is normally way larger than a typical Western indie. And their aim is always to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time. So you'll have someone with some money, say a land developer; he'll invest $200,000 and hire a bunch of artists, programmers, etc. They'll take a mature engine, local or other wise (a lot of times pirated), and try to make a browser or server based mmo. Their hope is that when the $200,000 runs out, the Tencent and Shandas will swoop in and buy them off or fund them. This happens sometimes, but they mostly go belly up. 'Course, they've gotten smarter and now try to do outsourcing for the Tencent and Shandas to hedge against bankruptcy.

But make no mistake, if the trend holds, the Chinese studios will dominate the browser based gaming space very soon, and a lot of that will be indie.

[moi]

Yes but it will die soon afterward after the chinese realize they are no other developers left to rip-off .

[Booger]

The only Chinese games that have interested me at all turned out to be Taiwanese.  Most are like Evony and install spyware on your computer.

It says a lot when they regulate the games industry like gambling, alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

Games as art?  Not in China.

At least in the west instead of being lumped with casinos, games are lumped with movies and afforded copyright protection.

[longshot]

Gosh, I wonder why Chinese indie devs don't visit western forums.

It's almost if they would feel unwelcome or something.

[Nix]

Gosh, I wonder why Chinese indie devs don't visit western forums.

It's almost if they would feel unwelcome or something.

Are you Chinese?

And all of these "unwelcoming" statements are grounded securely in the reality of Chinese culture. That is, unless you're Chinese and can enlighten us otherwise.

[longshot]

And all of these "unwelcoming" statements are grounded securely in the reality of Chinese culture...

傻B

[Nix]

And all of these "unwelcoming" statements are grounded securely in the reality of Chinese culture...

傻B

So are you Chinese or did you use a translator? I'm not trying to offend you. I'm really curious at this point.

[rayteoactive]

Yes but it will die soon afterward after the Chinese realize they are no other developers left to rip-off .

I think it's unfair to judge the Chinese gaming scene like that. Unlike the western, most of the population probably wasn't even exposed to games years ago. Imagine skipping NES, SEGA, SNES, PS1, PS2 and going straight to WOW. It really is a very different deal.

I'm from Singapore myself, one of the more "western influenced" country, and yet I didn't have a PC until I was 17, and the idea of entering the game industry was almost impossible just 8 years ago. Even today, there's a lack of studies in games design, and many games here seems to be designed by programmers and artist referencing to game they grew up playing. And now you look back at the Chinese, many aren't literate in English, so learning games design is even harder for them.

I think they (and us) will eventually pick up and come up with our own innovative ideas once they get pass the learning process or developed their own ideology of games (which I suspect they already did, just highly commercial and different from the west). Dissing the Chinese, assuming are just gonna die off in this time is just being emotional, and probably lack of willingness to accept others. All that, and ripping off ain't Chinese exclusive. Look at the amount of angry birds and flash game clones and tell me they weren't made in the west. Hell, even angry bird and minecraft were based on another game. Just well made.

[KlausLarsen]

This discussion is also partly about "how to crack the chinese market" (and japanese and korean) - That is how to generate sales from those countries...

It's fairly "easy" to market and sell your games in the "western" world (Europe, North America and Australia) - However, then we have these huge countries like China, Japana and partly Korea and India. They have a big population, their economy is overall good, so they are very interesting markets for (indie)game developers. The main obstacles are: the language barrier and more importantly: the cultural differences.
I think that many "western" games don't do so well in those Asian countries because of the cultural difference. It is actually quite annoying, because you have 1,5(3) billion potential customers, but you just can't reach them because of the language barrier and the cultural difference.
I don't know this, but I'm pretty sure that eg. chinese game developers have the same frustrations about us:
It's fairly easy for them to market and sell to the local markets (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) - BUT, Europe, North America and Australia - D*** it's hard to market and sell games in those territories.

[rayteoactive]

I don't know this, but I'm pretty sure that eg. chinese game developers have the same frustrations about us: It's fairly easy for them to market and sell to the local markets (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) - BUT, Europe, North America and Australia - D*** it's hard to market and sell games in those territories.

Actually... that's probably not the case. For one, western culture seems to be a lot more expressive, so it's easier for us to learn. The asian on the other hand seems to keep opinion to ourselves, or only our close ones. Secondly, if you look at the history, for the past hundred years or more, since the western countries have much larger spending powers, we have been learning how to sell stuff to you guys. And when you go down to a more personal level, people like us that wanna sell our products would have been learning about the west since young.

In fact, here in Singapore (and I believe Hong Kong), we probably know how to make and target a game at the western market, than the China market. There's a big culture gap between the countries, despite us from the same ancestry roots. And I'm not even going into the gap within the country itself. My opinion is, if you are a businessman, and wanna make money from China, you probably wanna spend a year or two there. Otherwise, you probably want to stay with the western audience. That, and the western game is probably more fun to make at this point, anyway 

[longshot]

For those of you who are interested, http://www.myonlystar.com is a Chinese independent game site.  It has a mix of western and chinese independent gaming news.