Sandsoft is growing! Today, we warmly welcome Yang Chen as Business Development Director, China. With his impressive track record, Yang is set to be an invaluable addition to the Sandsoft team.
We asked Yang about his insights into current market trends and cross-cultural gaming opportunities.
You’ve had a remarkable career spanning business development, marketing, and game publishing in China and beyond. What excites you the most about joining Sandsoft as the Business Development Director for China?
The most exciting thing is to have a chance to work with a real global team composed of game experts and professionals from different cultures who have great professional experiences. Although there are many companies in China publishing games globally, most of the people in the teams are Chinese. However, I am an advocate of the cross-cultural team. I believe with contributions from different nationalities and cultures, of diversified mentalities and inspirations, a real international team has far more potential.
Given your experience in bringing Chinese-developed games to global markets and introducing foreign games to China, what unique opportunities do you see for Sandsoft in the evolving gaming landscape?
I am very surprised and impressed by the diversities of project experience of Sandsoft’s team members, which covered nearly all of the game genres or categories. Meanwhile, China provides a rich supply of game products of different types, art styles, etc. People call China the ‘World’s factory’. For game development, the expression may not perfectly fit, but at least it’s one of the ‘most productive factories’. The game market changes very fast nowadays, given the tremendous experiences of Sandsoft’s team, we are very flexible in publishing the newest popular types of games for global players while getting these different types of games fast produced in China provides a very good source for Sandsoft.
Your work has covered diverse game genres and platforms, from pixel-art roguelikes to licensed IP games. Are there specific trends or types of games that you believe hold the most promise in the current Chinese gaming market?
Maybe I won’t name a specific game genre. Actually, I feel the borders of different game genres are getting more and more unclear. For example, now we can see RPG elements in strategy games, simulation games, and even in casual games. So a big trend I am seeing is the merge of different game genres. Now many games are taking this strategy by making an attractive and casual appearance or addictive core battling at first, then combining it with complex and well-designed growth systems, economic systems, PVP, GVG, and social systems, By doing this they can reduce the CPA from one side while improve the ARPU on the other side. I think the trend is not only in China but also globally, so we can see companies who used to do IAA games adding more content to their new titles and now doing IAA+IAP, while companies who used to do big MMO strategy games now adding many casual gameplays to their games.
With your background in Web3 and blockchain-based games, do you see a future where these technologies play a significant role, especially in the Chinese market?
Some Chinese fellows who did traditional games already transferred to Web3, but they are targeting at foreign market because China has more strict rules and ambiguous attitude towards this. Indeed, many small Web3 games fell and closed quickly in the crypto winter in the past years. However, in the long run, I think Web3 and blockchain-based games, if not fundamentally replace traditional games, will at least somewhat change traditional games. There are many good concepts about Web3 games, such as play-to-earn, owning NFT assets, which I personally think are human’s basic psychologic needs. With the development of Web3/blockchain technology and the awakening of these needs of internet users, it’s likely that these needs will be more required by game players in the future, thus reshaping games.
For those aspiring to build careers in gaming business development, what key lessons or insights from your journey would you share as foundational for success?
First, try to make yourself professional. You not only need to know business negotiations, and communication skills, but also try to use every opportunity to learn some knowledge about all other aspects of game business such as game designing, development, marketing, community relations, etc.
Second, I would like to emphasize honesty. You may get some tiny short-term interests if you play dishonestly to your partners, but in the long term, sooner or later, people will find out and may spread it. By then, you will lose your chance and have difficulty in taking any more steps forward for bigger and longer collaborations.
Interested in joining the team and working alongside Yang? Explore our open positions today!
