Welcome & Introduction to Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Shanghai - Chris James, Steel Media Ltd.

[music] [music] Zho Shanghai Yad PG connects Shanghai Jam. Okay, that's as I'm afraid that's as far as it goes. Uh, good morning and welcome uh to all of you, including our honored guests um to PG Connect Summit Shanghai in association with my games. My name is uh Chris James. I'm actually the chairman these days of Steel Media. Uh the company behind these conferences. Oh, there you go. Um as well as leading media such as pocketdame.com, pocket biz, AI game changers newsletter, mobile games awards, and many other things. Uh for the last few years been part of a

wider family, the Enthusiast Gaming Group based out of uh North America. Uh they run a lot of properties around the game space including uh partnerships with sports leagues, including um PC games websites like Icy Veins, tools for hardcore gamers like UGG and the Sims resource amongst other things. Um and there's some of what they do. And pretty much everything Steel Media and Enthusiasts do is about uh connecting, celebrating uh and supporting the games industry, whatever format or genre it happens to adapt and wherever the world it happens to be. Uh and talking about the world, uh over the last 12 years or so, uh we have traveled uh the world uh running various events. This is our fifth uh PGC event of the year uh and our second installment of uh of the pre-China Joy Shanghai event. [snorts] Um uh yeah, we've been on around 18 different cities. We've united over 75,000 delegates. Uh we have uh 120

countries represented, over 170,000 meets. We reckon we've contributed to a couple of billion of business deals. Um and yeah, we've been uh we've been doing this for quite a while. I will stress at this point uh that a lot of timings move about. This is a thing you have to get used to. So I have a lot of slides and a short period. So I will skip through. If you want the slides afterwards, I will share them with anybody. But don't don't panic. Um anyway, um we've been doing this for quite a while now. This is our 20th birthday, our 20th anniversary. Thank you very much. And I think you'll agree I haven't changed a bit. Uh this is me 20 years ago. Um also notably the devices that we were covering have changed quite a bit. This is the this is what the mobile phones and handheld consoles look like when we got started. Um these are some of the big games that were dominating mobile phone games when we started. Uh

uh Digital Chocolate, EA, Game Loft Glue. [snorts] Uh and this is what we look like. Apologies for that pixelation, but this is this is how we started. And it's a a testament to how how hard it was to make games and distribute games that back in those days, we actually made printed guides to hand out to people to explain how to download mobile games. Now, I know this sounds a bit like an old old man indulging in nostalgia, and that is a little bit of this, but there's a there's a method to this madness of why I'm doing this, cuz I I think it's important to understand how quickly things have evolved and how quickly, looking ahead, things can change. Uh, again, back when we started, this was the video games market. Um, 31 billion in 2005, according to reports. uh some big big console franchises uh it was uh consoles PlayStation 2, Xbox, PSP, Nintendo DS of course dominating.

But at the time when we started mobile games especially was very hard like the market, trust me, I'd go to conferences like this about games and people would be just miserable. Uh they were saying, "Oh, the market's never going to work. We're never going to get ahead." Um and and back then I thought that was quite bad. Nowadays, we've absolutely mastered being miserable about the games market. Um, uh, today it feels like the the games industry spends half its time sort of complaining about how hard things are. Um, and to be fair, there have been setbacks. We've had issues with uh, UA and and marketing. We've got the we had a drop off postco. We've got a lot of um, competition from other platforms, so social media uh, video etc. And also we have competition from existing games. It's very hard to to break through the existing games. So there are reasons uh why it is difficult and there's been sadly a lot of people uh and companies have have been lost at least temporarily

in the last few years. So I don't take that lightly. Obviously Xbox just uh added to that recently with uh Microsoft added that recently. However, we do also need to remember that the industry has accelerated at incredible speed over the last 20 years uh and continues to grow which is something that even uh the incredible an uh annual report from Matthew Ball which I'll refer to a bit here can't ignore. He was he has been quite cherylish. Um this is the the growth of the of the games industry. I I will note here pocket gamer launch just saying uh I'm not taking all responsibility but it we was part of us um but yeah Matthew Ball was quite chillish about the industry not too chish to take a job at Xbox himself of course um but but this is it this is this is the reality of where the market has been this is new as their third or fourth reforcast of last year's numbers saw it go over $200 billion dollars uh

globally And to be honest, impressive as this is, um, that's not the full story because New Zoo and a lot of the data we see doesn't include hardware sales. It doesn't include mobile advertising. So this here is another forecast which does include some of that which saw last year around $263 billion uh, global market. But I still don't think that's the full picture. As um as kind of PG Biz has has been covering recently in various articles, the amount of bookings that go straight uh to uh DTOC web stores is just absolutely kind of skyrocketing. You can see see the numbers there. You can can see the data here from from Matthew. Some uh the likes of Scyplay, Huge, Stillfront, Play Tikica, some people are saying they're making almost the same or more money off uh the app stores as they are inside it. Uh and that number those numbers are not easy to see. You know, you can't trace those data. Um so it's a

big market. So no surprise that we are seeing so many great companies offer to help with web stores. Exola who are the one the headline sponsor here uh they do a great service there other vendors as well but there's a lot of great companies vying for that but this is kind of part of the bigger picture where you add in alternate app stores I know in China you've had other app stores for a long time uh you know Google Play is not the biggest Apple's not the biggest you have these other app stores but elsewhere in the world it's been dominated by Google and Apple and Steam but more and more other app stores are coming to way and this is kind of creating a distribution revolution that is creating new opportunities to developers all around the world. Uh and and later in one of our our tracks in the growth track we'll be talking about some of these opportunities and this also feeds into a wider topic about games everywhere is what I call it where everything is becoming a games platform.

Uh you've got Discord, WeChat, of course, even the New York Times or LinkedIn, a business uh platform that a lot of people use and HTML 5 browser gaming is getting ever better. Uh there's also got um Tik Tok minis and YouTube playables coming along. And and you guys don't need to be told about this. WeChat mini games, according to some data I was looking at, made over $7.6 billion alone uh last year. That's a huge huge amount. Um, and and as you can say, these other platforms, you've got Tik Tok and and and and YouTube playables and obviously Netflix bringing games straight into the the platform. And whatever media data you follow, there's no doubt games have have been the biggest entertainment industry in the world for some time now. And our IP and technology is not only inspiring other industries, it's actively crossing over. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, whether it's movie studios, sports league, subscription TV channels. Um,

you can see other industries using our technology like literally uh platforms like Unreal being used in the film production industry. Uh, other uh YouTube and Twitch and and Tik Tok. There are more hours spent watching games content than actually playing it. I think it was like 50 billion minutes in the last 12 months on YouTube uh content. Um the crossover between music and games has has become bigger and bigger. There's more and more concerts around music games like Clare Obscure, Stardy Value, Resident Evil, Sonic all had concerts recently. Big stars like Lana Del Rey uh and uh and K uh starring on uh tracks for Bond and uh the Bond game and Diablo. And people like Woottown Clan and Dead Mouse are making their own games. Um and of course on the big screen this is even more noticeable. Uh the biggest stars and studios are lining up to appear in films and TV shows based on our games IP uh which in turn provide positive feedback loops. Sonic 3 was the

biggest in the series. That's by un usual the series series get bigger made almost 500 million at the box office. Microsoft P Microsoft uh sorry Minecraft power passed that from Microsoft uh reaching 960 million and then was beaten by Super Mario Brothers Galaxy with just over a billion still short of the 1.3 billion that uh the original Super Marios uh film made. We've got Resident Evil coming up. We've got Street Fire, Angry Birds Volume 3, Sonic 4, The Legend of Zelda. There's TV shows like The Witcher, Last of Us, and Fallout. Marggo Robbiey's production company's making The Sims. There's like 50 o of projects we know about already in production. Um, and it's not just film and TV. The apps business is taking note of us. There's a big increasing crossover with the apps industry. Um, this and some fronts seems like bad news. Sorry, it's a bit pixelated, but this shows that the apps revenue is overtaking games, but there's a lot more apps and and generally it's really interesting, especially companies like Dolingo that

are are blending games uh techniques with uh their own uh apps uh and ads. [snorts] I mentioned ads, an ad slide. Obviously, the advertising market is a huge opportunity. It actually represents this is from Matthew B's report the biggest part of the growth uh in the games industry for the last few years mobile games and apps in other platforms uh is getting ads in other platforms is getting uh uh is getting bigger and bigger um one of the the biggest segments in the app space is and is driving everything is uh is of course AI um and this represents challenges and opportunities in the western market it's fair to say gamers don't like AI in games there's a big backlash against any game that has AI. However, on the um on the development side, it's kind of become table stakes. Whether it's for cricket creation and iteration, smarter marketing, enabling whole new types of

games, AI is essential. And we've got a whole uh mini track, the AI gamers summit happening this afternoon. I know China Joy is full of AI as well. This is a huge huge thing. and the Chinese companies. We did a story recently talking on PGBS talking about how Chinese companies are ahead of the game there. It's not directly AI related but UGC is also huge huge trend and that's it's being fueled by AI because creators can make games more quickly and this is the scale of this is is astonishing. Um, if you look at at Roblox, this is a lot of the games industry kind of peaked uh around COVID, but this is the Roblox engagement uh charts. And if you compare this against Netflix, which is the biggest kind of standard media channel outside things like YouTube now, that is the engagement of Roblox versus Netflix in the last uh sort of year. It's incredible. And you can see this is, you know, versus every other platform. Uh Roblox, you know, is bigger than most combined. Even in individual games,

individual Roblox games like Grow a Garden, Steal a Brainwalk, Brook Haven, uh compete with things like Fortnite and the EFC for attention. Um, and of course there's lots of money being made. They've paid out over, I think, one and a half billion in the last sort of 12 months alone to developers. So, there's money to be made in UGC. And this kind of brings me into one of my favorite slides I always like to show and why I think people should be optimistic. The video games industry is incredibly good at adopting new technologies, new platforms. And you can see from here how we've grown as an industry. Um, and obviously mobile is a big spike, but again, we've adopted things. This only goes up to 2022, but obviously there'll be more added on top of that. You got web 3, VR growing, UGC added to that would spike it again. And my my my challenge to you, which is I didn't make this up, this is obviously Apple's logo, is is that there is opportunity there. We just need to think a little bit different. Like for instance, AAA, a lot of people been saying the AAA industry is dead. That's

not quite true, but a lot of big AAA console games have struggled and some studios have have disappeared in the last year. However, the flip side of that is indie games have had absolute ban a year. Multiple smaller, more agile titles have been succeeding and showing new ways to engage with players. Okay, I'm going to skip through now. never um funding hasn't dried up entirely. It's just more difficult to get. This is last year was a record for M&A in the games industry. 161 billion and in the first half of the year so far there's been 118 billion of of game related M&A activity already. Um investment admittedly the number of investments have gone down. This is Dave from Drake. But the amount is still there's still two and a half billion invested in games in the last uh quarter alone. And I won't pay, but if you want to see who's spending money, go to Drake and they tell you who the top investors, where they're investing, who's spending money. Um, they also point out new funds

have launched in the last quarter alone. Again, two billion worth of new funds. And even if you can't get VC funding, which is not as easy as it was in the COVID and pre-COVID days, there are other ways. There's uh publisher funding, there's uh UA as a service, there are other uh project funding, even government support is is is there. Yes. Okay, I need to skip through lots of other reasons to be cheerful. I've been given a minute. Um yes, even GTA not coming out is a reason to be cheerful. So I will skip through quickly. Uh one thing to look at is why and this is an interesting thing for Matthew report just shows to think differently think about different segments and one of those is obviously geograph geographically I wanted to have a quick shout out to Southeast Asian market uh and to um uh also to the Middle East both fast growing markets so if you're looking for new opportunities do look you can look abroad there are new markets growing rapidly obviously the

spend is different in different countries uh and The handsets are different, but the opportunities are there. If you can make games work in different uh geos, uh people like um uh SCA Garina do with Freef Fire and and PUBG Mobile from 10 cent, you can make money. Uh ultimately, of course, and we'll get to it. The reason we're here to focus on the Chinese market, and it's unarguable that China and its game makes in the ascendancy. They are the biggest, this is the biggest games market in the world now, according to New Zealand year. Um and and Matthew Ball again if you go to his report uh he talks a lot about the Chinese market and he explains how China has basically dominated you guys have dominated the growth of the industry for the last few years. Um and also also he's quite upbeat about the opportunities particularly in the PC console sector. Uh Matthew B sees a lot of opportunities for growth and continued growth there. Um I'm skipping through. I'm skipping through. We have a report. grab one of those. That's some

more data about the Chinese market. If you're ch even here, you might know it, but everyone else will be useful. Um, and yes, and and basically we've been covering the Chinese market for a long time. Um, we have been coming to China for a long time and we've been running events here for a long time since about 2008. Um, and that's why we think that this is going to be the best year to be in gaming and the best year to be uh in China. Um, so yes, I do have I do have a couple of very small things to to point out and I will I will move on. Um, I just need to say the track there's four tracks of content and the aame gym change the summit videos are available online. There's a schedule online if you miss if you want to know what's going on. Uh, meet to match networking platform. Please check in. There's over 600 people in there want to meet you. Um, expo you can see that we've got the big indie pitch happening. There's a big indie showcase. 40 studios out there. And tonight the event continues uh after hours with our our party from 7:30. And

we also have a mixer tomorrow night uh from 7:00 p.m. as well. So look online, you'll get details about that. Uh there's help at reception. If you want to share PPG connects, I think it's on WeChat as well. Use that tag login. We know that. Quickly, final thing. Can I have a big round of applause please for our headline sponsors Exola and Amazon Web Services as well. Also platinum sponsors Mstars and Nine uh a gold sponsor Two BID our silver sponsor Adjo sponsor Olium Mob associate sponsors lots of them uh media partners and of course our incredible speakers. Big round of applause to the incredible speakers. Thank you very much. And don't forget the Steel Media team. Okay. Right. There's more if you if you enjoy this. We've got more to come in Cologne. We're running the mobile games awards alongside Gamescom. And then we have PGC Nordics uh in Helsinki before uh Jordan, the Canary Islands, Montreal,

and then return to London. And that is Sorry, I was overtime, but that's enough of me. I would like to welcome to the stage uh um MueL and Charles from My Games, our partners. Please go a round of applause for these guys. Sorry, I was over bit over time, but thanks for patience. [snorts] I said 10 minutes. It was like 10ish. Sorry. [snorts] That's okay. Chris, you are amazing. Thank you very much.
Yeah. So, about we'll say that. You can say as long as you want. That's good. Thanks. [snorts] Cool.
I'd like to have some words in Chinese. Okay. Yeah. Lord,

PGC PGC. Fore! Foreign! Foreign! Fore.

[applause] Thank you, J. Uh on behalf of my games, uh events like this are extremely important. Um and Pocket Gamer has been doing extremely good job on running these conferences globally for u years and years already. uh with the meteoric rise of Chinese developers on a global stage as well as the massive growth of the Chinese uh gaming industry, gaming market and its importance to the international developers. It is perhaps more important than ever uh to have an event like this uh during China Joy Week where international developers can come to meet uh with the Chinese developers

and publishers. we can learn from each others, make connections and initiate those great business deals. Um, we are incredibly u happy to be uh the local partner to bring the uh pocket gamer events to Shanghai for the second year now in a row and of course incredibly thankful for the uh support of the PUAN government. Um so please be welcome. Please enjoy the event. Um make those connections and uh have a fantastic week. Thank you. [music]