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Students, office workers boost games sector

For the past six years, spending an average of four hours a day playing online games after work has been the norm for customer services executive Shen Meng-hua (沈孟樺).

"I wasn't attracted to these games before, but after the first few tries I was totally addicted," the 26 year-old Shen said yesterday at the Taipei Game Show 2006.

The gaming expo opened on Thursday and will run through Monday at the Taipei World Trade Center's Exhibition Hall I.

Shen says she spends around NT$500 (US$15.44) per month on subscriptions to online games or purchasing gaming items.

Interacting with others while playing poker or mahjong in cyberspace helps her unwind after a hard day at work and let off steam after dealing with demanding clients, she added.

Gamers like Shen are the driving force behind the online gaming sector's growth momentum, analysts said.

The market value of the local online gaming industry is set to expand by 8 percent to NT$9.78 billion (US$302.8 million) this year from NT$9.05 billion last year, according to a report released by Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心) last month.

According to MIC analyst Lin Yu-Sheng (林于勝), the market is poised to grow by 5 percent to NT$10.28 billion next year.

A poll MIC conducted last year among 2,668 Internet users revealed that 64 percent of them play online games, with students and office workers forming the majority.

Office workers spend an average of NT$557 a month on online games, while students spend around NT$275. Each player is engaged in an average of 1.73 games, Lin said.

The poll found that in addition to the more popular "massive multiplayer online role-playing games" -- multiplayer games that enable thousands of people to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time -- less time-consuming casual games have recently become more popular.

Casual games, ranging from sports to card games, accounted for 30 percent of all online games last year, up from 23 percent a year ago, according to MIC.

Acknowledging this trend, local online gaming companies said that they would not be left out of the market for casual games.

ChineseGamer International Corp (中華網龍), who has garnered around 3 million members, intends to launch its first casual game before the middle of the year.

ChineseGamer is the research-and-development subsidiary of the nation's largest game distributor, Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技).

"The game is being developed locally with Taiwanese tastes in mind. As the market has become saturated with players and a growing variety of titles to choose from, we need to offer something unique to our members," said Cherie Hung (洪育雯), marketing supervisor of ChineseGamer.

NC Taiwan Co (吉恩立數位科技), an affiliate of Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), plans to roll out four casual games developed by its South Korean partner this year, public relations officer Cathy Hsieh (謝欣潔) said.
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