Why should you come to Chengdu

On May 17, 2011, in Chengdu, by Yan
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As a girl from Shanghai, the fanciest metropolis in China, I used to be very supercilious towards any other cities except my own. However, after 2 years living in Chengdu, I must admit that I am slowly falling in love with this city and my current life style. I would like to share with everybody who is interested in relocating to Chengdu, why should you choose Chengdu?

There is a saying about Chengdu, that it has the best cuisine and the prettiest women in China. The later part of that sentence has not proven its credibility to me yet, while the first part is an absolute fact. Food here is awesome, spicy and non-spicy. If you are a foreigner, you can enjoy the main stream dishes such as Kong Pao Chicken, Spicy fried chicken, salt fried lean pork with paprika, Ma Po Tofu; Nevertheless, I do suggest to skip some exotic local tastes such as steamed rabbit head and pig nose :)

Chengdu Teahouse life (c) by wai.cheong

Chengdu Teahouse Life (c) by wai.cheong


Naturally if a city is famous with its cuisine, the life style of local people is more relaxed. Same theory applies to Europe: Mediterranean countries serve generally better food and have relaxing lifestyle than northern European. According to survey, Chengdu people are the happiest, stress-free people as well as the most open people in China. Charming local teahouses, scattered over the whole city, are the places where people acquiring the best service at the lowest price. They spend their whole lazy cozy afternoon in teahouses to meet friends, play mahjong, and drink tasteful Chinese tea. What a foreigner has in mind about Chinese atmosphere will come true in a local teahouse.

An article by the Los Angeles Times describes Chengdu as “China’s party city”. Chengdu outnumbers Shanghai in its number of tea houses and bars despite having less than half of its population. It is proven by a conversation between me and one of our designers, I asked, what did you do during this weekend? The answer is always, eat and play.

From an employer point of view, Chengdu talents are also easier to retain compared to those in Shanghai and Beijing. The living cost in Chengdu is lower. People here are more optimistic and easier to be satisfied with their work and life, which means that they are less salary focused and speculative.

If you are interested in good food, relaxing life style, low price, cute pandas and maybe also pretty women (to be proven, ;) ), this city might be put on your list to relocate. Visit us at TribePlay!

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Competition among Facebook games

On March 11, 2011, in Company, GameNext, Social Networks, by Gregor
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Recently we at TribePlay thought a lot about how the Facebook gaming market will develop. Obviously the competition is getting stronger and stronger. There are hundred of emerging games on Facebook and at the same time hundreds that are going down. Among the top 85 game and app developers, 79 % are currently developing Facebook games or social apps, according to a study from Viximo.
The competition on Facebook games is really intense, advertisement is costly and not really effective through the nature of a Social Networks. When you have a look at the top developers, you of course have Zynga, who dominates the market, and you have a couple of developers who all have MAU of around 20 to 30 Million. Luckily we have a diverse portfolio to be not too depended on Facebook.

Tadhg Kelly wrote a terrific article in which he uses the term “Red Ocean” for the Facebook social game market, a term which describes a highly competitive market with everyone chasing the same kind of costumers using the same kind of methods. I found his point of view really interesting. Kelly says that most Facebook developers do not differ in categories like Gameplay, Play Area, Financial Model, Branding, Cross Promotion, Reward-Drivers. From developers like Zynga and EA to Indie developers, everyone tends to use the same techniques from development to marketing. Also he is criticizes the lack of innovation of most Facebook games. I remember last year there has already been a some discussion on this topic.
So it seems that game developers still haven’t learned from their past mistakes and everyone keeps on copying each others games. Of course there are some innovative games coming up from time to time, but you must admit that for the majority of games and developers Kelly’s points are true.
What are the reasons for this? Because everyone is doing it? Or are it the consumers, who do not demand different games? In the end I guess it is both, but still there must be a way to create innovative, fun games, with humorous elements, which can get a solid fan base and create decent revenue. We at TribePlay try to balance these elements. Of course we are also creating casual games, that are targeted at a broader audience and have only an impact within a certain time frame. But with innovative Virtual Worlds like Eccky I believe, TribePlay also created more “sustainable” and user friendly games. Virtual Worlds are much more expendable and communicative than classic social games. One can add new features, new mini-games and let the players decide what they want to do. I believe in the long run, social games will have to expand their features, as I wrote it in my previous piece. To compete in these “Red Ocean” of social Facebook games, you have to come up with new approaches. Game developers have to get back to its roots, and think of creative ways again to create games. In the end the users will reward it, if is a balance between their needs(distraction for a short period of time) and the fun part of gaming. Do not be frightened by Zynga, when doing so… :)

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