Author: Lauren Brady

One of Donald Trump’s last actions as President may still jeopardise the future prospects of our flourishing global games industry.

This goes deeper than policy.

This is a story of Presidential hissy fits and diplomatic mistrust on a scale that puts the cherished values of the global games industry on the line.

Before the Trump administration’s intervention, Chinese and Western developers had been enjoying closer ties; both increasingly depend on each other for the production of games and their marketing too.

While the West is heavily reliant on Chinese production services, China in turn has started to use Western-focused marketing services as they extend their reach beyond their own domestic market.

But on August 5th, 2020, everything changed. 

Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, made a major announcement on US policy. It was an announcement that attacked the very spirit of the gaming community. 

Games are synonymous with community, friendship, and connectivity. The new policy detailed restrictive practices with the power to attack those values at the heart of the industry we cherish. (More of those details shortly.)

 

Another Trump Hissy Fit?

With Trump, it was personal. The new policy was revealed a few weeks following Trump’s humiliation at the hands of U.S. TikTok users. They successfully used the platform to encourage K-Pop fans to apply for free tickets to a Trump rally in Tulsa, despite no intention to attend. 

The result was a sparsely attended Trump rally with an abysmal turnout that made the president look far from popular.

In response, Trump threatened to have the app banned. It was a further escalation of his war on both domestic social media platforms and his trade war with China.

 

What is The Clean Network? And why is it a problem?

And then, soon afterwards, came Pompeo’s August announcement. He revealed a policy initiative called ‘The Clean Network’. It was Trump’s response to alleged third party interference in online security.

The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.

The Clean Network addresses the long-term threat to data privacy, security, human rights and principled collaboration posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors. The Clean Network is rooted in internationally accepted digital trust standards. It represents the execution of a multi-year, all-of-government, enduring strategy, built on a coalition of trusted partners, and based on rapidly changing technology and economics of global markets.

https://www.state.gov/the-clean-network/

The Clean Network’s aim is to purge some of the biggest Chinese apps from U.S. digital stores. This includes some of the biggest social apps, such as WeChat and TikTok; and some of the biggest games too.

The U.S. claims these apps are backdoor information-gathering tools, with the developers of WeChat and TikTok (Tencent and Bytedance respectively) both sharing their data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese authorities deny this.

The Clean Network reality for the games industry is a raft of restrictions with the potential to have a major impact on its future.

But with potential restrictions looming, it’s understandable that Chinese developers are nervous about planned campaigns on the U.S. market.

Yes, Chinese games developers reliant on success in the West have most to lose. But many suppliers in the West are vulnerable too, as REALTIME has already witnessed, with at least one major project falling through as a direct response to the policy.

And the real losers in all of this? The gamers themselves.

 

How bad might it get?

Despite the fanfare of the policy announcement, it’s still difficult to predict precisely how The Clean Network might be implemented. 

What do we know?

We know that video games are amongst the most popular Chinese apps in U.S. digital stores. It makes sense to expect the policy will cast a long shadow over some of the most successful Chinese publishers. 

And then there’s WeChat. 

Attendees to ChinaJoy, one of the world’s biggest annual games industry events in Shanghai, will understand just how big WeChat actually is. While its popularity is mainly confined to China itself, it’s worldwide influence is growing.

China’s biggest social platform is the world’s most popular app. One billion monthly active users enjoy everything from text messaging, calls, digital payment, file and location sharing, and video games.

For Chinese living outside of China, it is the primary means of keeping in touch with family and business partners from the East to the West. While the banning of the app in U.S. stores came as a surprise to some, given its comparatively low use in America, it still remains a major blow to business relations between East and West. 

 

Important yet divisive: The Chinese Conundrum

Shenzhen-based Tencent is by far the World’s largest games publisher. It has extensive interests across both continents and publishes some of the world’s biggest games.

One of Tencent’s most popular games is the combat survival game PUBG Mobile. It is hugely popular in the U.S in particular making It is one of the top ten highest grossing mobile games of all time. Estimated earnings are way over $3.6 billion USD. 

Thanks to its own government’s restrictions on the grounds of ‘myopia’ and ‘addiction’, Chinese publishers have become increasingly reliant on non-domestic markets to offset any risks to its business.

It led to Chinese developers specifically developing games that will appeal to more international markets. Some developers have secured Western IPs such as ‘Game of Thrones’ to build a game around. Yoozoo, developer of the mobile title ‘Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming’, acknowledges that sales outside of China account for 60% of its revenue.

To further muddy the waters of the debate, China is hardly a champion of Games Industry values itself. It is very selective about which games are permitted to be sold on its shores. Games can only be published with the correct Government licence. They clamp down hard on anything that might be perceived as a threat. 

Even the innocent-looking cutesy Nintendo game ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ found itself slapped with a ban after players were found to be using it to share pro-democracy messages.

Further still, in April, the CCP banned Chinese players from playing with their peers overseas or even chatting with them.

 

Optimism in spite of it all

With such draconian restrictions, it might be that the Clean Network policy proves to be the U.S’s attempt to level the playing field. This is a trademark of the outgoing Trump administration which had other prime-movers in its sights too.

Huawei is perceived as a ‘national threat’ by the U.S. government. Its strong stance on the Chinese-based communications technology provider has been highly influential in ensuring that many of its allies, the UK included, don’t use its products or service ahead of building their respective 5G networks. 

If the U.S’s intent is that its allies should follow its lead, then there is a possibility that the Chinese video games industry could soon take a huge hit too.

The 2020 U.S. election was one of the biggest moments in the country’s history, and its result will have ramifications across the globe. 

We have already seen how the Trump administration’s ‘Clean Network’ program has negatively impacted companies in the West (ourselves included) who have sought to have closer ties with publishers in the Chinese market.

 

Our Simple REALTIME Plea

Our simple plea to a new more-globalised US administration under Biden is to take a fresh view of Trump’s broad-brush prohibitive digital security policies.

And, as a matter of urgency, we want him to revisit and better understand how closer collaboration between countries can improve the Games Industry for everyone.  

If you would like to discuss marketing for your upcoming release, wherever you are in the world, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].

It’s the gaming showdown of the year; possibly even the decade. With lockdown in full swing, many have taken solace in their consoles, which leaves us all wondering about the soon-to-be-released Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5. 

Many are torn between which to get. Both Microsoft and Sony have taken some flack for the boxy and strange look of their consoles, but both have also received praise for their innovation. So, with less than a month to go until their big release, how do the Xbox Series X and PS5 measure up against each other?

 

Graphics

When Microsoft dropped their Xbox Series X gameplay showcase, some were… less than impressed. The video showed games that we’re all excited to play, but many were hoping to see some more real-time gameplay. Some were hoping for more from the graphics, which ultimately led to Halo: Infinite’s delay. 

PlayStation, however, had an impressive Unreal Engine 5 demo. The video was a great showcase of what the next generation is capable of and excited audiences with its sublime graphics with hyper-realistic lighting and intricate details. While Sony might have snagged the reveal, Unreal Engine 5 will be available on the Series X too, so as impressive as this demo video was, we can expect the same for the Xbox Series X’s graphics.

“But the Series X boasts 12 teraflops to the PS5’s 10.28, so surely it’s better?” Not quite. Many think higher teraflops are equal to better graphics, yet teraflops are only really a measurement of the console’s power. The PS5 has a higher maximum clock speed, which lets it work harder than the Series X, but will likely generate more heat. So it’s a bit six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

Games

While both consoles will have their jewels in the crown, Xbox is putting a lot of weight behind Game Pass. This monthly subscription will give players access to new games on the day they drop, but also access to over 100 legacy titles already live and streamable to your phone

Sony has responded with the PlayStation Plus Collection, though its collection isn’t quite as expansive. Similar to Game Pass in quite a few ways, the Plus Collection lets you download games to your console but doesn’t match with Xbox’s day of release feature. Their list of games is limited, with titles such as God of War and Detroit: Become Human, but it is a huge boost for anyone who never invested in a PS4. It’s also a new idea that has the potential to expand in the future, not to mention PlayStation Plus’s general feature of giving you free games every month. Any newcomer’s library will grow very quickly.

Both consoles will be banking on a strong library of cross-gen multi-platform games to bolster their launch line-up. But both have taken a bit of a punch in the gut with Cyberpunk 2077’s very recent delay. Why this has happened is unknown, but some speculate the pressures of developing for both current- and next-gen consoles have had an impact. Indeed, there are several cross-gen games – even those touted as huge launch games, such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Sackboy: A Big Adventure, both of which are on PS4. Will this stop them from reaching the heights of what can be achieved with the new hardware? That’s something we’ll only know in time.

 

Acquisitions

Xbox has been very busy over these last few years, acquiring studio after studio. In the past, this has included big names like Obsidian, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory. But we doubt anyone was expecting their latest purchase: Bethesda. 

This monumental purchase is the epitome of Microsoft’s current strategy. Does this mean Bethesda games will be exclusive to the Xbox? Not necessarily; Minecraft is available on every platform going, many of their titles are also available on PC, and they have been known to strike deals with Nintendo. But it does mean they hold a lot of cards in this fight.

Sony, on the other hand, takes a different tactic. Their biggest announcement was the console exclusivity of Final Fantasy 16. But their approach is to go smaller by locking down exclusive content for multi-platform games. For example, Spider-Man will only be available for PlayStation players of Marvel’s Avengers. From the latest Call of Duty to Destiny 2, this has been Sony’s MO for some time and is likely not going anywhere.

 

The looks

Let’s not kid ourselves – how it looks next to our TV is just as important. But it seems like the internet hasn’t been too kind to these poor consoles.

In recent reveals, the PS5 is definitely the biggest boy this generation. And people can’t help but notice it kind of looks like a router.

The Xbox Series X doesn’t get away from the mockery. Plenty of people think it looks like a fridge. They even went and made one and gave it to Snoop Dogg. Why? Well, why not? And the Series X S has been compared to everything from a washing machine to one of those tannoys you use to order your McDonald’s.

 

The future

So which will come out on top? Both Sony and Microsoft have taken a leap forward with their consoles, and both will no doubt have their usual die-hard fans. But with Microsoft putting their eggs in the Game Pass basket and Sony opting for an all-digital SKU, it’s hard to tell which undecided consumers will be more drawn to.

But there’s no doubt both Sony and Microsoft will do what they can to corner more of the market. Even now, you can see them racing for exclusivity deals with brands. KFC is partnering with the Series X to give one away every day for a month, along with an “interesting” custom KFC controller for it. PS5, meanwhile, is partnering with Doritos. Though there’s no work on a customer Doritos controller – what a shame.

So will consumers be intrigued by PlayStation’s strong list of exclusives? Or is Game Pass’s netflix-ification of game streaming the way forward for the industry? Only time will tell; let the battle begin.

At REALTIME, we’re excited to see what this next generation brings. If you have a next-generation game and are looking for experts who can bring it to life, get in touch with me at [email protected].