China's biggest social networking and video games company hasn't been able to scale its popular products in the Western mainstream It has been achieved by investing in companies outside China, but now it is increasing its on-the-ground presence abroad through video games.
Local executives have been hired to run overseas outposts of TiMi Studios and Lightspeed Studios, two of the company's most successful gaming studios.
We spoke to Steve Martin, general manager at Lightspeed's Los Angeles outfit, to find out how Tencent is managing its international gaming branches and what expectations it has for them. Lightspeed has offices in the US, Canada, Singapore, the U.K., France, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates.
The ability of the company to turn established PC games into popular mobile plays is more appreciated. Lightspeed made its name by creating a mobile version of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.
By May, PUBG Mobile had earned $8 billion in lifetime player spending, making it the second top-grossing mobile game in the world, behind Ti Mi's Honor of Kings.
The company wants players to remember it by it's own intellectual property. The Lightspeed L.A. office is working on a game that will appeal to hardcore gaming fans.
Lightspeed L.A. is managed by Steve Martin.
Martin said that the game will reflect cultures and sensitivities from across the world. In two to three years, the game will be finished.
The executive said that the project is very ambitious.
There are a lot of Chinese players in the game. Lightspeed L.A. is trying to get a bigger crowd.
After a 15-year ban, China's console market is booming. Despite generating $2 billion in revenues in China last year, the industry is still humble compared to mobile and PC games, which brought in $45.5 billion in revenues in 2021.
It's called "autumn."
Tencent has a hands-off management approach towards its gaming portfolio companies, allowing them to operate autonomously while providing support as it sees fit.
It looks like it's keeping the same formula for its overseas studios. Everything is done in the L.A. office of 83 employees, which will eventually expand to a team of 200, said Martin.
There aren't that many publishers that give this level of creativity.
Pony Ma and Martin Lau are known to be avid game players. It is always about what games we like when we talk about games with the management. Martin has had executives who don't play games.
Martin oversees a collective of directors across disciplines, rather than having a single mastermind dictate most decisions. The audio director makes the decision when the studio chooses a soundtrack. Martin said that this structure eliminates the problem of 700 people posing questions to one boss.
People want to own the game.
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