"Įven though six years feels like eternity in media and pop culture, Gwertzman's speech still stands out because of China's snail-paced changes regarding media regulation. "I see Minecraft as the perfect example of a game that will receive public support. " Minecraft is on the good side as it encourages teamwork and learning," he said. Soon, the government instituted rules banning certain behaviors in those games, including "stealing" of in-game items from other players and mafia-styled game concepts.īut in a recent phone interview with Ars, Gwertzman guessed that Minecraft will probably avoid such undue attention with its upcoming launch. The country's state-run press negatively covered those kinds of video games, complete with horror stories about dying children. At the time, he was talking about a rise in social-network gaming on sites like RenRen. "Whenever the government is about to regulate something in China, you start to see a lot of scary articles appear in the press first," Gwertzman said. There, he gave one of the most comprehensive speeches in recent memory about trying to launch Western games in the communist, regulation-heavy nation. "The most challenging aspect of doing business in China by far is dealing with the government," former PopCap executive James Gwertzman said at the 2010 Game Developers Conference (which I covered for a prior employer).
#Western game popcap software#
Microsoft was able to publish the game on Xbox One consoles late last year, but those consoles have yet to penetrate the Chinese market to the extent that PCs and smartphones have, and the fact that even Microsoft had to license the game to someone else as opposed to launching it from its own Shanghai campus is a stern reminder of what roadblocks stand in the way of Western software developers. On Friday, Microsoft and Mojang announced the beginning of a "five-year exclusive partnership" with Chinese software publisher NetEase, Inc to roll the game out onto Chinese computer and smartphone marketplaces.The game's Chinese rollout date and release details have yet to be announced, and neither company confirmed how much money exchanged hands for the deal.Ĭhina isn't hurting for games originally published in the West, but M inecraft is arguably the world's most popular video game.
#Western game popcap Pc#
Those dudes are worth a lot of money.īut any doubters who questioned that sky-high valuation saw a new feather drop onto Microsoft's cap this week: Minecraft's PC and smartphone versions are finally coming to China. When Microsoft opened its wallets in 2014 and traded $2.5 billion for Mojang, the public by and large nodded their heads in agreement.
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