With the upsurge of going out to sea in recent years, Chinese game manufacturers export not only products but also capital overseas.

According to gamesindustry, Tencent has opened a new office in (Los Angeles), Los Angeles, with an initial size of about 150 people, and new positions will be created in the company's game design, development and engineering departments over the next three years.

Currently, Tencent has five offices in the United States, including Los Angeles, Palo Alto (Palo Alto), Irvine (Irvine), Seattle (Seattle) and New York (New York).

It is reported that Tencent's new Los Angeles office will integrate the existing Los Angeles office. In addition to physical expansion, Tencent has also made a number of investments in overseas games in recent years.

Over the past decade, Tencent has invested in more than 150 game companies. According to incomplete statistics of nuclear competition, there are about 30 overseas game companies invested by Tencent, accounting for 20%.

Competitive Nuclear has previously reported that in 2020, Tencent set up its own game studio LightSpeed Studio, in Los Angeles, which is part of Tencent Photon Studio Group. At Tencent Games's press conference in 2020, Tencent's first shooting host masterpiece, code name: SYN, developed by the studio, was exposed.

Today, Tencent's strategy of entering the overseas game market from the capital level is also more systematic.

Overseas layout in the past ten years

Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent, once said: "We hope to compete with large European and American companies at the same height." Under this vision, there is hope for success all over the world, and we all hope to incorporate it into the ecology to support and nurture it. "

According to the Q1 financial report of Tencent in 2021, Tencent Games's business income during the period was 43.6 billion yuan, an increase of 17% over the same period last year. Among them, the business income of PC is 11.9 billion yuan, and that of mobile games is 41.5 billion yuan (including the revenue of mobile games belonging to social network business).

Its "Arena of Valor" (international version of: Honor of Kings), "Game for Peace" & "PUBG MOBILE", "call of Duty Mobile Games" and so on firmly occupy the top position in the global mobile game market.

In the field of mobile games, Tencent and other Chinese game companies have been in the forefront of the world. But it must be admitted that in the field of traditional 3A masterpiece content research and development, such as PC/ mainframe, the average level of Chinese manufacturers still lags behind the world's first-class manufacturers.

And ploughing the game field from the perspective of capital has obviously become the most familiar means of Tencent.

Over the past decade, Tencent has invested in more than 150 game companies. According to the survey statistics, Tencent invested in at least 31 game companies in Q1 in 2021 alone, accounting for 35.6% of the company's 87 investments in various areas of Q1.

In terms of magnitude, Tencent's first investment peak in games was in 2014-2015, when mobile games were growing explosively, and the other peak was from 2020 to the first quarter of 2021.

Focusing on the field of overseas games, according to incomplete statistics, Q1 Tencent invested more than 26 overseas game companies from 2012 to 2021, covering Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea and other countries and regions.

Among them, companies involved in PC/ console game business account for nearly 90%, including Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and other well-known manufacturers.

In addition to investing in potential manufacturers in the global market, Tencent is also keen to set up its own studio in the global market and tap top gaming talent in overseas markets.

In 2020, Tencent recruited 12 well-known game talents overseas, who originally belonged to companies / groups, including Ubisoft, fist, EA, Sony, Marvel, etc., involving producer, creative director, TA director and other positions.

Such a large-scale talent hunt shows that Tencent no longer wants to hide its intention to enter console games and target 3A.

In a previous nuclear competition interview, Ma Xiaoyi revealed that Tencent has controlled about 10 unified 3A game studios overseas, with more than 2700 R & D staff. The size of the team will continue to grow in the future, with at least 3500 people expected by the end of 2021.

He stressed that if we want to be on a par with big European and American companies, we need to design native products for overseas markets.

Accelerate industrialization and promote the development of 3A

It is not difficult to imagine that as the major manufacturers are on a par with 3A, the structure of the entire game industry is bound to change dramatically in the future.

However, there is a problem that must be considered, that is, the industrialization level of domestic games still needs to be improved, which is also an important link affecting the development process of domestic 3A games.

The purpose of game industrialization is to improve productivity, including means of production, producers and production objects.

Core Competition once mentioned in the report "70 pages of depth: comparison of the industrialization process, Industrial inflection Point, and Evolution trend between China and the United States" (click on the blue word to review the full text) that comparing the industrialization of games between China and the United States, we will find that overseas manufacturers such as EA, Activision, R Star and other overseas manufacturers have the ability to steadily produce "New year goods", such as the "FIFA" series, the "Grand Theft Flying car" series, and so on.

In contrast, mobile games such as Tencent's "Arena of Valor" series and NetEase's "Onmyoji" series are of high quality and derive IP series products, but the product continuity is insufficient and there is still a big gap with the 3A masterpieces generally understood by the market.

In this case, it is an inevitable process for Chinese game manufacturers to learn from the 3A production experience of veteran game manufacturers in Europe and the United States. This may be the guiding factor for Tencent to actively invest in overseas research and development companies, recruit top game talents and set up studios overseas in recent years.

In the Q1 financial report in 2021, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that looking to the future, opportunities continue to emerge in various vertical areas we operate due to the increasing popularity of technological innovation and digital solutions among users and enterprises. Therefore, Tencent will expand its investment in many areas such as high-level industrial games.

In February this year, Tencent IEG began to adjust its strategic structure. To some extent, this also shows that Tencent wants to adjust its organizational structure to make the project operate more closed-loop as a whole.

In the short term, organizational structure adjustment can reduce the entropy of project cooperation. In the long run, the ability of industrialization is indispensable to cope with the competition in the global market in the future.

At present, there is no quantitative standard for game industrialization, but in Ma Xiaoyi's view, game industrialization needs to have several characteristics:

First of all, the basic quality is high enough, such as the control lens in the game, the scene, etc., can reach a high enough level.

First of all, the basic quality is high enough, such as the control lens in the game, the scene, etc., can reach a high enough level.

The second is large-scale production and high efficiency, which may require a team of thousands of people to do development at the same time, and can quickly iterate through new content and functions.

Finally, use enough specialized tools, such as Epic Games's recently launched MetaHuman virtual human system.

Specifically, when it comes to the reserve of development technology and tool chain, the average level of Chinese manufacturers in the field of technology still lags behind the world's first-class manufacturers, but it does not mean that there is no advantage at all.

The biggest advantage of Chinese manufacturers is that we are original online game manufacturers, accustomed to using some system rules to solve problems in the game, using play to drive the content of the game. The advantages of overseas 3A manufacturers lie in their industrialization ability, basic production quality, and the expressiveness of the game.

In fact, we can also find some clues from Tencent Games's investment layout over the past ten years. For example, Tencent bought a stake in mainstream engine manufacturers such as Epic Games, invested in top game developers such as fist, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and reached cooperation with Microsoft and Nintendo in the field of mainframe games.

In this process, it is bound to lead to an environment for learning from each other.

As Ma Xiaoyi said, eventually everyone will need the advantages of overseas 3A manufacturers and Chinese manufacturers in terms of industrialization. It depends on who can make up for the deficiency faster, and who can explore the advantage of the new long board fast enough, who will have a chance to win the crown.

At present, Tencent further integrates its game resources in the United States through the establishment of a new office in Los Angeles. Not to mention, whether it can greatly improve the level of Tencent 3A and game industrialization in the short term, but in the long run, it is of great significance for Tencent to accelerate the development of overseas game business.