Outside China the summer months are normally not the best months for online gaming portals. But in China things are different, July and August are always the best period for Chinese entertainment sites. Last year we broke all records for Spil Games’ Chinese sites during the summer and this year looks like it will be exactly the same.

The reason is that a lot of people visiting our sites are students, and they have a lot more time on their hands during the summer holiday than during the rest of the year. Chinese kids normally don’t go on long holidays or play outside a lot, like their European counterparts, and so they spend a lot of their free time behind a computer screen. Furthermore, it’s too hot to do much else in large parts of China, so the internet is a good way to avoid being bored.

We saw the effect in our July stats today. Game.com.cn grew an amazing 50% in July to over 15.2 million unique users and xiaoyouxi.com added about 25% new users to a total of 13.5 million unique visitors during this month. This means we now have a monthly reach of 28 million Chinese players, which is far above my expectations (note: there is likely some 10-15% overlap between the users of the sites, so real reach will be a bit lower). Guo Haibin and his team: congratulations for this amazing result!

Sales are also growing each month (figures are confidential), a sign that the online advertising market is finally starting to grow in China. Of course having sites with huge traffic makes it easier as well, ad agencies and advertisers take us a lot more serious than just a year ago. Too bad most ad sales are still for a fixed period of time (buying a banner position for one day or one week) instead of based on total views (CPM) or clicks (CPC). In that regard the Chinese online advertising market is still years behind.

The only thing that does not take off yet is in-game advertising. Zlong Games (our in-house game development studio) can easily create advertising space in the games it makes, but there is no demand yet from advertisers. Surprisingly, because that is where you can really interact with your audience – if you do it right.

I think one major reason is that the advertising agencies are not selling in-game advertising to their clients yet. Either because they don’t understand the benefits or because they are happy with the status quo. In-game advertising agencies are not gaining much traction yet either, but because of the potential impact of ads in games they eventually will. Until then we just keep on growing our gaming portals!

This weekend I noticed a smart car next to our house. At least it looked like a smart, but when I had a closer look I saw there were quite some differences. Then I also noted the brand name Toyota on both the side and back of the vehicle. I got a bit excited, was this possibly a prototype of the new Toyota iQ? Because I started my career in the automotive business and also occasionally write columns for a car magazine I still follow what’s happening in the industry.

Looking a bit better at the car I noticed that it had AMG on its doors. That’s a bit strange for a Toyota, because AMG is part of Mercedes-Benz. I looked up the Toyota iQ on my iPhone and compared the cars. It certainly was not the same car, so I realized the owner put some fake Toyota badges and a fake AMG sticker on his car.

So what car is it? The Toyota branding put me on the wrong foot for a moment, but then I realized it must be one of China’s smart clones (there are several of them). Looking at my pictures from a smart clone at last year’s Shanghai Autoshow I figured out that this is the Shuanguan Noble (see last year’s picture here or this YouTube clip).

So the owner not only drives in a cloned car but also changes it to a better brand. Now he drives a double fake car, a bit embarrasing…

When I arrived in China many years ago I deliberately decided not to live in one of the compounds in Shunyi (close to Beijing airport) where most of my colleagues had their villas. I took an apartment close to the Second Ring Road (at the then brand-new East Gate Plaza) and have lived in the city center of Beijing and later Shanghai during my whole stay in China. I never thought I would ever move to the suburbs, it’s just too convenient to be able to have shopping malls and restaurants within walking distance.

But having a baby boy changes everything: with an additional full-time nanny, a 6-days a week ayi plus more longer-staying family members suddenly our 4-bedroom apartment is getting too small. And with a child we want to have a garden instead of just a balcony. So about two months ago we started looking for a villa and found a suitable one quite quickly. It was a 400+ sqm villa in the Hongqiao Golf Villas compound, and we planned to move in two weeks ago.

But a few days before moving there were some complications: the house was not renovated yet, the landlord was avoiding us for unknown reasons and when we managed to get in touch with her she was extremely arrogant, hang up on my wife and seemed to be looking for a way out of the contract. Eventually we decided this would not work, so we canceled the house contract, informed our moving company, and were lucky to be able to stay a few more weeks in our current apartment.

We went looking for houses again like crazy, and last week finally found a nice villa where we could move in quickly (see picture). A bit more expensive than originally planned, but I was so fed up with the time it takes to look at houses plus we really liked this house and compound, so we decided to go for it. We will move in this Friday already.

From then on I will be living in Suburbia, something I always dreaded. But now I am actually looking forward to it. It will be very quiet, I will be able to have breakfast outside in the garden and I will also have my own gym at home. The commute to work will be longer however, which is the biggest downside. All in all I look forward to living in the suburbs, I suppose I am getting older…

By coincidence my parents (who are visiting Shanghai) just mentioned Randy Pausch’ The Last Lecture to me, and I decided to watch it again on YouTube. There I noticed that Randy passed away yesterday, age 47. His Last Lecture was an inspiration for me and many other people.

On the Internet many people are talking about Randy right now. 3o minutes ago he was number 7 in the list of hottest tags on Twitter, and at this moment he is number 3 already (higher than terms like iPhone or Barack Obama). To commemorate him Google even put a link on its homepage to the Last Lecture video, I have never seen Google do that before.

If you want to learn more about Randy, you can see his Wikipedia entry here, his YouTube video here, and a transcript of The Last Lecture here (pdf). Carnegie Mellon University wrote a touching In Memoriam that you can read here.

Rest in Peace.
The Google home page today with the link to Randy Pausch’ video at the bottom

A couple of months ago Dunkin’ Donuts announced that they would open their first store in China in May this year. I love donuts, so I was quite happy to read that there would be an alternative for the Japanese-owned Mister Donut chain. However, so far Dunkin’ Donuts promise did not come true. I have not seen any retail outlet for their donuts in Shanghai, even though it’s July already. Maybe they got cold feet at the last minute? The company already had a bad China experience: As some long-term residents in China might know Dunkin’ Donuts used to have some outlets in Beijing in the late 1990’s, but they closed them down because China was not ready for donuts yet at that time.

Well, if Dunkin’ decides to cancel or postpone its market entry, there might be another competitor that is more willing to take risk: Krispy Kreme. This company already has stores in Hong Kong, but not on the mainland so far. By coincidence I saw a job ad for senior executives for Krispy Kreme in today’s Shanghai Daily. The advertisement says that a Krispy Kreme joint venture will launch Krispy Kream outlets in Shanghai, but it does not state a date.

I wonder, however, if they will be able to attract any serious talents because the English in the ad is terrible. Why don’t they just spend a few dollars to proof read it? Especially when they want to recruit people who are fluent in English!
A few examples of strange sentence structures that I noticed in the ad:
– (Krispy Kreme) offers special tastes of doughnuts and coffee loved by diverse people all over the world such as U.S., England, Australia and others.
– Common facts: No disqualifications for the international business trip
– Year of birth only from 1965 to 1980 required
Furthermore there were spelling mistakes, and instead of fast food they used the word quick service restaurant. Hopefully their donuts will not be as localized as their ads are!

Today Spill Group officially changed its name to Spil Games. Over the past years Spill Group has become known as a leader in game portals. Therefore the brand image under the name Spill Group did not accurately reflect who we are, what we do and what we stand for. The main purpose of the new brand name is to quickly give our customers, portal visitors, the press, and other business partners an accurate representation of our identity and exactly what we do.

The logo has changed as well, the new logo is more playful and exciting, as a gaming company’s logo should be. The new logo keeps the original corporate colors and branding, but has been revamped to include a bouncing ball element. And of course with a new company name you also need a new website: check it out at http://www.spilgames.com.

The name Spill Group Asia won’t be used anymore either, from now on our Asian operations will carry the name Spil Games Asia.

This afternoon I was walking through Taikang Lu, the hip entertainment area in Shanghai, when I saw a new ice cream shop. In front of the shop a young blond man was using a hammer to hit nails into a wooden chair. He turned out to be Bing van der Lande, the Dutch owner of the shop. Bing is only 23 years old and told me that during the day he is doing an internship at Dutch company Randstad. But instead of going out at night and spend his money on beer, he decided to use it to set up a business in Shanghai: a fresh ice cream shop. Coincidentally his name is the Chinese word for ice, so to find a name for the shop was not difficult: Bing.

The idea to set up this retail business came to Bing when he was on holiday in Sanya in May. There he saw someone selling ice cream that was made on the spot with a machine that deep freezes the ingredients. Back in Shanghai Bing managed to find the producer of the machine, and he bought one of the freezers. He then went to look for a place to set up the business, and found a side street of Taikang Lu that was still mainly residential. He negotiated to use a front room of one of the houses, broke out the front wall, installed the machine and set up his shop there in late June. A few weeks later a lot of new restaurants and shop have appeared in the street, so he chose the right place at the right time.

Two young women run the shop during the daytime, when Bing is at work for Randstad. But during the weekend Bing is here himself to serve ice cream to customers and to upgrade the shop (he is now adding a small terrace in front of the shop, so customers can sit down). Bing recommended a lemon mint ice cream to me, which indeed tasted very good. One of the girls put the fresh ingredients into a blender and then put the liquid mix into the ice machine. Basically a stove that freezes instead of heating up. In a few seconds the liquid started to freeze and in less than a minute I had a fresh ice cream.

You have the choice of many fresh ingredients for your ice cream, including many kinds of fruit but also things like red pepper and even champagne. There is a fixed price of RMB 25 for a big bowl of ice, maybe not cheap for local Chinese but quite acceptable for most people eating and drinking at Taikang Lu. During the 20 minutes that I talked with Bing he had at least 6 customers, and all seemed to like the ice cream. Very soon he will start using ecologically friendly materials (cups for the ice cream for example), which is a smart marketing idea.

The original idea for him was to earn some extra money during his internship, but because he now sees the first signs of success he is thinking about building out the business. I gave him some advice on this, and hope he manages to make his business even more successful and maybe build it out to a chain of ice cream stores. Although the concept has a low entry barrier I think with good branding and consistent quality he can stand out from the potential competition. I told him to think big and use his cash-flow to invest in one or more new sales outlets. The problem is that he will have to go back to Holland in September to finalize his studies, but he has a trusted Chinese business partner / friend that will help him to run the store during his absence.

Bing, good luck with your business. I admire the fact that you dare to take some risk and invest your time and money in something you believe in.

Bing – Address: No. 4, Lane 278, Taikang Lu
Bing put signs on two of the main entrance roads of Taikang Lu, so you cannot really miss the shop.

This afternoon I went to China’s biggest gaming conference and exhibition, ChinaJoy. It’s a fun event, but it’s also very crowded. And when it’s 38 degrees outside it’s also very hot. I mistakenly thought that today was an industry day, but when I arrived I saw lines of people waiting to buy tickets that were literally hundreds of meters long.

Luckily in China there are always scalpers around, and I managed to buy tickets for 75 RMB (normal price 50 RMB), which saved me an hour of waiting in full sunshine. Other scalpers were not too happy with my seller, because none of them wanted to go below RMB 100. But this one was smart, and he understood that selling me 4 tickets for 75 RMB would bring him the same profit as 2 for RMB 100. We had to walk away from the others before I could pay him though. I actually was not sure if the tickets were real, but we managed to get in without any problem.

The show itself is almost the same every year. Huge lines of people waiting to try a new game, get a free poster or take a picture with one of the ‘cute’ girls. Most of the people visiting the show are young men, and they all seem to love the innocent Barbie doll-look that the girls are chosen for. It sometimes seems they have never seen a girl before, let alone taken a picture with one!

The main reason I go to the show is to meet some other gaming companies, and to look at some at the new games that are coming out. Despite the huge amount of people I indeed met some colleagues from the gaming industry and also some VC’s looking to invest in games. It’s easy to spot them in the crowds: we are about the only ones above 30 years old. I got a few ideas for new games and for an application that we can possibly use with flash games, so it was worth the trip to the outskirts of Pudong.

Some pictures of the show, the companies (and of course the girls) can be found in this set.