Cape Town – While China boasts the world’s largest eSports market, local organisations have been struggling to find enough talented gamers.
According to South China Morning Post (SCMP), various training institutions have opened up across the country who are offering eSports-related professional courses to help ease the shortage for the industry that is growing at a rapid pace.
The China Game Industry Development Research Institute reported that more than 400 million people in China played eSports in 2020 and statistics showed that the industry was already short of 500,000 people last year.
“In terms of recruitment threshold, we will prioritise university graduates and candidates with higher academic qualifications,” brand manager of League of Legends at Edward Gaming, Wang Peng, said.
“Positions for overseas operations and international video distribution require employees to be familiar with foreign culture, so we may recruit people with overseas study experience,” he said.
Wang added that some people would need to manage fan relationships which would require candidates with experience in community operations as they would have direct contact with fans.
Meanwhile, the mobile gaming sector has also seen a surge in the country with China Global Television Network (CTGN) reporting that Shanghai's mobile gaming market is dominating the industry with a revenue growth of US$18 billion in 2020.
The increase in demand and revenue growth was attributed to the global pandemic as well as China's affordable locally made mobile devices.
“We have been selling games overseas since 2018. Before that, most of our sales were from the domestic market,” said Grace Xiao, branding director at Boke Technology.
“Now, 60 percent of our customers are overseas players,” she said.
And, while gaming has seen a massive spike, so too has online streaming both domestically and internationally, which developers are now looking to leverage growth from.
African News Agency (ANA)