Game Maniacs

In truth, Gamania's genre variety is rather narrow. Its games are free-to-play MMOs distinguished largely by theme - cute musical pirates, armour clad dragonslayers - and Chen is aware that some titles just won't resonate with Western audiences.

"Dream Drops is very good for Japan, it's getting a very positive impression from the Japanese. The European and US players, there's some reservations there for their markets," admits Chen.

"In the next couple of months, or one or two years time when we go through new development phases we can make changes and be more specific about which territories we go to. Are we going to bring all out titles to Europe? It really depends."

Five years from now Europe will account for 25 per cent of consolidated revenue worldwide

William Chen, Gamania

Gamania is entering Europe at a time when free-to-play and browser games are booming, with companies like Bigpoint, InnoGames and Gala Networks sucking up users in a market originally established by Jagex and Acclaim. Is there room for another player when there are already multiple games to choose from, all free, all riffing on RPG, strategy and MMO themes and gameplay, all screaming for attention?

"For Gamania right now every market, every language is very challenging," acknowledges Chen. "I wouldn't say Germany is the most difficult to crack because it's the largest PC online gaming market, so they understand the marketing, they know what online gaming is all about and we an use that marketing channel. Whereas in English speaking territories it's still very console based so to promote a free-to-play game it's much more challenging to educate the user in the UK, in Nordics, and other parts of Europe. For the French market there's a very big dominant local player so to step into that market you need to right communication. Every market is different."

Chen isn't being naive. His five year plan for Europe and the US is specific - each region will is expected to make up a quarter of sales by 2016.

"We have a rough idea that, five years from now, Europe will account for 25 per cent of consolidated revenue worldwide," he states. "And that's the same for the US, with probably the Asian markets accounting for 50 per cent, and within that 25 per cent will be purely from China. China right now is the largest single online gaming market in the world. That's pretty much the ideal that we have."

Chen uses China as an example of slowly understanding a local market and adapting the business to suit different consumer needs.

"China is a very big market and user behaviour is very different from Taiwan and Hong Kong," he notes. "The Chinese gamer plays very differently, they want to complete a game, they want to level up very quickly, they don't mind the grinding. And while gameplay is very important the community is just as important. The gamer is actually playing to meet and make friends. The gameplay itself is sometimes a bonus to making friends. They like to earn items and sell them on specific websites. These players are actually making money from playing the games," he adds.

Learning from China is being applied to Europe, says Chen, who also offers advice to European companies hoping to make a mark in the Chinese market.

"The market is so huge, so for pre-hype and marketing communication you need to start a lot earlier. Sometimes one-and-a-half years before you launch a game you need to start marketing it and by the time you're ready to go commercial you've probably spent around $2 million because it's such a huge territory.