Just the day after the release of Black Myth: Wukong, Gamescom 2024 officially opened on the banks of the Rhine.

As you may already know, after the cancellation of E3, Gamescom has become one of the largest game shows in the world. This year's exhibitors include Microsoft, Blizzard, Tencent, Ubisoft, 2K, Capcom, Krafton, etc. Manufacturers from more than 60 countries and regions participated in this year's game show, with an overall number of more than 1,400, an increase of 10% compared to 2023. Gyroscope also accompanied the tour to witness this annual gaming event in Cologne.

Unlike the sweltering heat that envelops CJ in Shanghai during the dog days, the streets of Cologne are still a little hot in September, but you can feel a little cool when you step into the shade of the trees – if you choose to go out in the morning, you can even feel a little cool.

Compared with the geographical climate on the other side of the Eurasian continent, what makes Gyro feel more novel when he comes to Cologne is the "new atmosphere" of domestic games in the European market - as more and more Chinese players emerge at Gamescom, today's European players and the European game industry may have a new understanding of Chinese game products and Chinese game manufacturers.

Today, Gyro would like to take this article to take you to see Gamescom, the players there, and the Chinese manufacturers who have traveled thousands of miles to participate in the exhibition.

Like CJ and BW, the peak traffic at Gamescom often occurs in the middle of the day. But even so, when I arrived at the Chinese game manufacturer's pavilion at 10 a.m., there were already a lot of enthusiastic gamers here.

Outside the Arena Breakout: Infinite exhibit, there was a long L-shaped line, 95% of which were foreign faces. Tencent's other FPS product, Operation Delta, which will be available on mobile, PC and console at the same time, has seen a similar scene, with very few Asian players on the scene.

Curious, I randomly selected a few players in line from the Delta Ops team to chat about the exhibition experience. One of the players told me that he didn't know much about the game before he came to the show, and that he joined the team because he saw the décor and game types in the exhibition area when he visited the show.

Many of the new game booths were designed like "Operation Delta", focusing more on highlighting the game style and logo, and attracting more accurate players through the features of the product. Correspondingly, the overseas players who attended the event also seemed to care more about the game products, rather than paying attention to the manufacturers behind them first.

As a result, Gamescom has naturally become a more fair and inclusive stage for manufacturers to compete on a fair stage. As long as domestic manufacturers can come up with a masterpiece full of sincerity and hard work, they can get real comments from players here.

In addition to "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" and "Operation Delta", Tencent's international game business brand Level Infinite also has a sizable exhibition area, bringing heavyweight products such as "Dune: Awakening", "V Rising" and "Exoborne" to players on the spot.

Another eye-catching booth came from miHoYo, a two-dimensional manufacturer. At this Cologne Game Show, miHoYo's "Genshin Impact", "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" and "Jeopardy Zero" were all exhibited, and the queue was very popular, and it once became one of the hottest game booths.

In our perception, European players may not be so interested in two-dimensional style games, but in fact, miHoYo's booth was surrounded by players who came to pick up the peripherals, and non-Asians accounted for a very large proportion of them.

It is worth mentioning that there are a lot of benefits distributed by miHoYo this time, and you can see players carrying miHoYo bags from time to time at the scene and outside the venue - I even saw players pulling suitcases in one hand and holding miHoYo bags in the other on the train back to Cologne from Beethoven's hometown next door. To some extent, this can be regarded as a kind of brand marketing and popularity communication.

NetEase also showcased several products at this year's Cologne show, including the casual simulation game Codename: Strange Travel, which debuted on the opening night of Cologne. As I mentioned earlier, I arrived at the exhibition hall at 10 o'clock in the morning on weekdays, and this fashion is not the time when the traffic is the largest, but the popularity of NetEase's shooting terminal games "Marvel Brawl" and "Fragpunk" has begun to gather, plus the aforementioned Tencent's "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" and "Delta Operation" have attracted a large number of players to line up, which shows the popularity of the shooting category in Europe.

In addition, there is also "Infinite Warmth" of Paperfold, and what is more surprising is that the proportion of men queuing up to participate in the trial is much higher than expected.

I guess on the one hand, this may be due to the fact that "Infinite Nuan Nuan" focuses on open-world gameplay, and on the other hand, this work will be released on multiple ends, opening up the situation for "Nuan Nuan", a domestic female IP to IP, in Europe, where PC and consoles are the main game platforms.

The mecha-themed game "Limit Relief Machine" of Xishanju has attracted many players to queue up to experience it as a rather hardcore product. In addition, the booth also arranged a unique live broadcast of the live battle, which attracted many players to stop and watch.

In the past two years, the high-profile SOC track has also unveiled new domestic products in Cologne, and the new SOC project "CrisisX" developed by Hero Games has set up a special experience booth at the Cologne exhibition this year, and the unique booth design has further attracted many players to stop.

Finally, I have to mention the martial arts ARPG "Shadow Blade Zero", which is very popular at the scene, combined with "Black Myth: Wukong", which won 10 million sales in 4 days of release last week and is based on Chinese myths and legends, you can feel more that the themes and stories from China have really stood up.

After watching the whole Cologne exhibition, my biggest personal impression is the diversity of games in China.

First of all, in terms of subject matter, in addition to martial arts games such as "Shadow Blade Zero", from Tencent's two domestic self-developed tactical shooting games, to the sci-fi mecha multiplayer battle in Xishanju; From miHoYo's two-dimensional open world, turn-based RPG, to PaperFold's open world dress-up; From NetEase's simulation game "Codename: Strange Journey", to the new hero game SOC "CrisisX", to Eagle Corner's party game "Bom Boum", the richness of domestic game genres in this exhibition is dazzling.

Secondly, on console and PC platforms, Chinese games are starting to sit higher and higher.

In fact, even putting aside this year's Gamescom, you can also sense this from the Steam global wishlist rankings: removing the just-released wishlist "champion" "Black Myth: Wukong", Tencent's "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite", "Delta Operation", "Dune: Awakening", NetEase's "Marvel Brawl", Xishanju's "Limit Machine" and Snail Games' "ARK2" account for as many as seven of the top 20 seats on Steam's wishlist.

Due to the country, some games are not shown

Nowadays, the reason why domestic games have collectively landed on the PC platform is due to the continuous layout of Chinese manufacturers in the past few years.

Leo, the head of TiMi's J3 studio, said that when they used to focus on mobile, they always felt that they couldn't get to the table at Gamescom. After continuous precipitation, the product has finally gained the opportunity to "compete with overseas manufacturers". This time, the popularity of "Operation Delta" brought by their studio has also greatly exceeded their expectations, receiving nearly 95% positive reviews.

Not only Tencent, but also with NetEase, miHoYo, Papergames, Xishanju, Hero Games and other manufacturers joining the team, PC and console games from China are gradually winning the favor of players around the world with excellent quality.

In the face of global trends, domestic manufacturers that were once dominated by mobile games have been able to quickly transform, sit at the mainstream table in the global market, and shine at the world's largest game exhibition.

Taking Tencent, which brought 22 new products in one go, as an example, how did Tencent achieve the transformation of more than 90% of today's exhibited products in just a few years?

At the Cologne Game Show, Gyro also interviewed three people in charge of Tencent's overseas game business, and from their descriptions, they learned about the global game development ecosystem that Tencent Games has built up over the years.

To put it simply, the goal of this ecosystem is to discover the world's best teams through collaboration, and then support them to complete the breakthrough of "from 0 to 1", "1 to 10", and "10 to 100".

Each team is different, and there are mechanisms within the ecosystem to help them grow.

Juno Shin, head of Venture Lab, told us that teams in the Tencent ecosystem often have the potential to create new ways to play, but due to their lack of experience, there will be many "pitfalls" on the way to breakthrough. The purpose of Venture Lab, a team of industry veterans, is to help teams in the 0-1 stage avoid the pitfalls they may encounter, reduce the failure rate, improve the success rate, and make their first successful product.

If Venture Lab is aimed at Tencent's R&D ecosystem "from 0 to 1", then for Tencent's large equity acquisition or holding company, these teams are often already leaders in a subdivided field, and there are corresponding mechanisms in the ecosystem to help them complete "from 1 to 10" and "from 10 to 100" breakthroughs.

Stephane Decroix, the head of Pteam, introduced to us that compared with Venture Lab, Pteam ensures the success rate of the team through more comprehensive expert support at the R&D level for the holding team, from CEO meetings to data analysis tools. Martin Sibille, Head of Global Console Game Publishing at Level Infinite, also shared how global publishing resources, including Level Infinite, provide global publishing services to partners at the publishing level.

I think this is also the secret behind Tencent's reputation as "Respect for Partners" on a global scale: within the pyramid structure of the R&D ecosystem, we bring in the world's best teams, guide them to set goals from "0 to 100" in a targeted manner, and provide necessary help and support in the process, but do not interfere too much.

Such a global ecosystem is extremely rare for game companies around the world.

Thanks to the in-depth globalization of leading manufacturers such as Tencent, the influence of Chinese manufacturers has also radiated to the world in a more diversified way, bringing more and more products that meet the needs of global players.

At Gamescom, many game practitioners and gamers were deeply touched to see the remarkable progress of Chinese manufacturers in globalization.

In an interview with the media, Zhang Hanjin (Enzo), president of the Rubik's Cube Studio Group, repeatedly mentioned their lament that they were able to "get to the table" as a Chinese game. The Rubik's Cube has been in the shooting track since 2014, but the first two products were not successful. After ten years of hard work and a cost of more than 100 million yuan, "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" finally appeared on the global stage. In Zhang Hanjin's view, having courage and daring to touch the edge is the premise, and when this kind of effort is accumulated enough, the team will most likely run out.

Zhang Hanjin introduced the overseas version of "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" to Chinese and foreign media in the Cologne booth

A Tencent friend who has participated in Gamescom for several years in a row told me that he felt a sense of pride when he saw more and more Chinese manufacturers. And I sincerely hope that this pride will belong to more Chinese manufacturers and Chinese players in the future.

Finally, I would like to share some of my impressions from the exhibition:

Gamescom is more of a purely "player-oriented" gaming event – all gamers come to experience new games and have fun, and they focus on the game itself. On this occasion, you will see parents taking their children to visit exhibitions, mothers accompanying their daughters to try out games, etc., which seem to be a slightly novel parent-child combination in China.

A pair that looks like a mother-daughter combination, the mother is watching her daughter experience "Infinite Warmth"

Therefore, in general, the age group of its exhibitors is also relatively broad, from children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged and elderly people, and different groups of people. So you will obviously feel that gaming is indeed a popular entertainment for all ages in some overseas regions.

I wonder if we need to continue to move forward not only in the industrial pipeline, in the production level, or in the game design concept, but also in the cultural atmosphere of the society and the attitude of the general public towards "playing games".

Perhaps in the past 20 years of "savage growth", domestic games do have many shortcomings, but there is always a group of people with sincere love and strive to make good games. In the milestones of domestic games, these high-quality games will inevitably be remembered. As more high-quality games are recognized on the international stage, our expectations for the future of Chinese games may be even higher.

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