Shanghai, Part 3

As I indicated in a previous post, I'm in Shanghai, China.  It's hot here.  Africa hot.  Today, my team attended the ChinaJoy Conference - a trade show all about video games in China.

It was large - but nothing like the E3 shows in the U.S.  Here's the big difference between the U.S. and China trade shows:  noise and crowds.  The sound level was incredibly high.  Most trade shows in the U.S. have a mandatory sound level that can't be exceeded.  The crowds here obviously reflect the difference in population.  To give you an idea, here's a short video of walking down the corridor:

The tradeshows in Asia are like adolescent kids...they're still trying to figure out their own identity and just want to be loud, daring and yet belong to a community.  This conference had its own beauty pagent:

Each game company had it's own booth, which mostly consisted of a stage with lots of girls just standing on it...oh, and some games:

A big part of any gaming show in Asia is something called Cosplay (costume play).  Gamers dress-up like their favorite game characters.  It's quite a serious hobby:

Just hanging out with the guys

This conference had the national finals for CosPlay.  Here's a quick video of some of the contestants:



I felt the need to participate, but I didn't have a real costume - I just grabbed the nearest "giveaway" and worked it...as best I could.

Where's My Prize?

Another great part of Asia (mostly Japan) is the use of English words in ads.  Here's an ad for computer memory, featuring some of the most popular professional gamers. I leave it up to you, whether they truly understood the meaning of the English words, or not.

Do we really need to advertise this fact?