'Keep in mind that the total market size generated from gaming in China in 2001 was $100 million and now we're at $32 billion.

'As online games started and games from Korea were launched in China, all of a sudden this market evolved out of nothing,' Hanson explains. So Chinese people are more comfortable with that.'Ĭoupled with how rare home computers were, free-to-play online games were an ingenious solution that made PC gaming accessible to all of China while still giving developers a stable way to make money. It made a lot more sense to try out a game and then pay as you go. 'The only way to play games, for a lot of people, was to go to LAN cafes. ' people just didn't own games back then,' adds Josh Ye, a reporter with the South China Morning Post. Originally a browser game, QQ Speed borrows a lot of concepts from MMOs, including social features and group play.

Though not as popular as its mobile port, QQ Speed is a Mario Kart-style racer developed by Tencent that has several million players in China.

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