China First
09 Feb 2018, in Corporate
Next Friday February 16th marks the beginning of the year of the dog. Needless to talk about China's stellar raise in all economic fields, including tech and innovation. But what does that mean for a young Spanish start-up with ambitions to conquer the games world?
About one year ago we started hunting game publishers to bring our big ideas to the market. We travelled to Japan, Germany, Israel, France, Netherlands and the US. We attended half a dozen game conferences and had face-to-face meeting with more than 50 studios, both big and small. We blew their minds, yet the unanimous "wow what a great and unique idea" did not land us one single deal. Sometimes you sell. Sometimes you learn. We learned a lot.
After six months we urgently needed to change strategy. When reviewing the mobile games market, we noticed that Chinese studios were prominent in the top grossing rankings for all main categories. So by the end of the summer we boarded our first Air China flight for an exhausting trip to 5 Chinese cities in one week. We did not hear any "wows" or "congratulations", instead we received a cool "OK, let's try it". We came back home with several closed deals.
In the last 6 months we have travelled to China 3 times now. We are working side by side with our first Chinese partners in both tech and product development. Chinese publishers are quickly conquering the overseas games market, and PlayCom will help them with that. Just like us they are hungry, they are sharp, and they embrace innovation in a practical manner.
Juan de Bravo, CTO at PlayCom
Ten years ago "mobile first" was all the buzz. We believe that now any start-up with global ambitions should radically embrace a "China first" approach. So happy year of the dog to all our Chinese partners. Go China! Go PlayCom! Go Pokemon Go Pokemon Go! (that was a silly but unavoidable joke).