Game Maniacs

Analysts and investors are pointing to China as the key growth region for European businesses, which Chen acknowledges is true, but it's not just initial costs for which a company needs to prepare to enter the region.

"In major metropolitan areas like Shanghai, Beijing or coastal cities the bandwidth is fine, but if you move further West there's very low bandwidth. So in those terms distribution is also a big challenge."

And legal requirements have publishers jumping through hoops, as a company like Blizzard has discovered with its World of Warcraft updates, but Gamania's experience proves it's not just a problem for Western companies.

"Even though we are a Taiwanese company, going into China we're considered a foreign company. So there's a lot of legal requirements, there's government regulations you have to follow that can really slow you down. We saw it with World of Warcraft - China is always the last place to get any updates. The Government can take six months to review and check everything, and it's very unique to the Chinese market."

"That's not a Western problem. It's the same for Korean and Taiwanese companies. We might be culturally very close. There are Korean and Japanese companies that want joint ventures with Taiwanese companies to go into the Chinese market - it's getting better - but it's not as easy and you're not on the same level as a local company. You will see in the next three years that Chinese companies in China will become very dominant."

Chen warns that an already difficult market is going to become even harder to reach, as local companies establish themselves with loyal customers by specifically catering to their needs.

"Five years ago there were a lot of foreign companies in China and the top ten games were made outside of China. Now, eight of the top ten are Chinese titles. They have developed games in the way that the Chinese player wants. The Chinese player doesn't need that many quests but they really like player versus player, a lot of items to sell in shops, that's very important to them. And they are sometimes very patriotic with Chinese developers developing very Chinese games, so they are keen to play locally produced games.

As well as establishing the brand and localising the games, according to CEO Albert Liu, Gamania is also eyeing Europe for acquisitions, should the right opportunity come along.

"If the right opportunity comes and we are interested in that particular M&A there's a possibility we could do that. We've done that in Asia," he says. "If the potential company would be happy and we could fit them within our company culture.

"Obviously creativity and the skills to create outstanding products are key to any partner, but also sharing is part of our studio culture, sharing ideas and being on a similar level in terms of passion in creating games."

We've seen trends of the MMO market and the free-to-play models and in Europe they are a few years behind Asia, but that's why we think there is a lot of room to grow

Albert Liu, Gamania

While MMORPGs are the core of what Gamania offers, it intends to use mobile formats as a way of marketing its bigger online products, and there's some talk of entering the console space should format holders adopt free-to-play games more widely. But the majority of efforts are in online free-to-play, and Liu sees Europe's slow adoption of the business as a good opportunity for Gamania as it plans to take the long road to success in Europe.

"We've seen trends of the MMO market and the free-to-play models and in Europe they are a few years behind Asia, but that's why we think there is a lot of room to grow.

"We fully understand that the UK and the European markets are very different to Asia so the big challenge is to really understand what European players like. That's the most important thing right now. And to understand what is good for one territory may not be right for another. It's not one territory, it's a lot of different territories and we must study them completely."