Nineyou

Shanghai based online game company, Nineyou information Technology, found teenagers want to state trendy no matter in the real world or the virtual one. The company’s top game, Audition, which at the peak hours has more than 800,000 people playing together, thrived on players dressing up their characters online.

More than half of the free-to-play dancing game players are girls, the highest proportion among all Chinese online games, mainly the age of 14-26, said Jamsper Wu, corporate management director of Nineyou. Total registered users amount to 230 million, even more than the official China internet popular of 130 million.

High score is not as important as cool dresses, for players of China’s most popular casual game. Most of items sold in Audition, hair style, blouses, skirts, boots, etc., have no function at all, beside the look. They are sold from several yuan to several hundred yuan a piece – for a week or a month of use.

“The items get expired in a week or a month time. Just like real fashion, you want to change to a different style from time to time,” said Mr Wu. And if you are a little short of cash, “why don’t you ask your boy friend to send it to you,” added Mr Wu.

Boys meet girls - that is what the game is really about. Girls dress up to stand out among each other. Boys come up with gifts to impress their girls. Not too unfamiliar even for the generation who have not touch any online game before.

The only different is everything is happening much faster in the online world. “Would you want to marry me?” said one boy-looking character to another girl-looking one, just after they exchanged “hi”. Sure, there are “wedding pass” on sale in Audition, as well.

Audition is not the first game to sell virtual fashions. So is Nineyou’s first major hit, O2jam, a music game which had 200,000 peak concurrent gamers when launched in April 2005. Although O2jam created a buzz among youngsters, it failed to be real revenue driver. “The rhythm is too fast. Nobody has time to check out what the other players are wearing in the game,” said Mr Wu.

When the company launch Audition in May 2005, it slower the pace, so that boys and girls have time to check up each others and socialised online. Revenue from items sales in Audition shoot up and has been the chief revenue source of the company ever since.

“Audition is still growing fast at the moment. The first quarter revenue is double from the same period last year,” said Mr Wu.

The company also start to develop online advertising. They have not been able to attract Gucci or Channel yet, but some local fashion chains have had co-branding promotion with them, mostly in form of in game items, said Mr Wu. For example, when a person buys a dress in the shop, they will get some game points to allow them to own a virtual dress of the particular brand in the game. Pespi and others consumer products companies targeting the youths have had lines of fashion under their brand in Audition, too.

Audition and O2jam are licensed from Korean game companies T3 Entertainment and O2media respectively. Nineyou developed another dancing game in-house, Super Dancer, but it failed to be a real hit – showing how unpredictable game players’ sentiments are.

“The risk of Nineyou would be that it depends on only one game, Audition. What if the game is no long popular?” said Fu Xinghua, analyst of Beijing based market research firm Analysys.

Analysys estimated Nineyou’s revenue account for 6.86 percent of the total China online game market in the fourth quarter last year. That is more than half of the revenue of The9, China’s third largest online game operator, which has about 13.3 percent, according to Analysys. The9’s fourth quarter revenue reached 282.7 million yuan, according to its financial statement.

Nineyou was founded by Wang Zijie, who has been a deputy supervisor of research institute of Japan game company Konami Corporation, as well as it supervisor of overseas business in its arcade machine division, from 1993 to 1998. Nineyou currently has 900 staff, of which 400 are in research and development.