硅谷开始将中国的游戏带到美国

A lot of companies have been sprouting up to help Western game developers break into the booming China mobile market.
But there aren't quite as many places to turn when looking for help to bring games from China.

Started by veterans of the U.S. and Chinese gaming industries, Pangea Mobile in Hayward, California seeks to make Chinese games a player in the U.S. market.

Only a handful of Chinese-developed games have managed to break the top fifty U.S. downloads.

"We kind of saw there is a need for Chinese company to come to the West. There's translation issues, art issues and there's game play issues. We're building a platform, basically a unique one stop solution," said Derrick Chen, Pangea Mobile co-founder & CTO.

Summoners Age was originally a Chinese-developed game. But Pangea gave their cutesy characters a dramatic makeover more fit for the Western market.

Pangea even tested app icons by reviewing them with targeted U.S. customers. In this case, Option A was preferred over Option B, 60-percent of the time.

"Small little things make a difference, like being able to be humorous in English. That's pretty difficult to just send it off to a company and translate it. It takes a little more care," said Paul Pierre, Pangea Mobile co-founder & chief product officer.

"I feel like the challenge is just like paying to attention to details, making sure your characters look familiar to the Western audience."

China and the West often have completely different styles of gameplay, too. Pierre says Chinese mobile games focus on getting users to pay upfront to win the game quickly. But in the U.S., games are built to create more of an emotional attachment. It may take longer before people spend money, but the games tend to sustain interest for longer periods of time.

"I just see that there's an immense amount of talent in China and I feel like more and more developers are starting to think of going global first," Paul Pierre said.

Pangea is also putting the finishing touches on its first in-house produced game -- Guild of Greyhoods -- scheduled for U.S. release later this year.

Pangea then plans to head in the other direction by seeking out Chinese partners to help adapt their game to the Chinese market, too.