Comments on: Supernova 2008: Does the Gamers’ Disposition apply to Chinese Gamers? http://cnreviews.com/china_gaming/supernova_2008_does_the_gamers_disposition_apply_to_chinese_gamers_20080621.html About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:31:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Paul Denlinger http://cnreviews.com/china_gaming/supernova_2008_does_the_gamers_disposition_apply_to_chinese_gamers_20080621.html#comment-2188 Paul Denlinger Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:20:25 +0000 http://cnreviews.com/china_gaming/supernova_2008_does_the_gamers_disposition_apply_to_chinese_gamers_20080621.html#comment-2188 If there is a single quality which makes for success failure in MMORPG playing it is "situational awareness". This means being aware of who is on your team, the overall situation, then being able to move quickly to take advantage of rapid developments to move higher, to the next level. It turns out that "situational awareness" is also the most important skill needed to win in the very dynamic Chinese business marketplace. The interesting thing is that the term "situational awareness" does not come from B-schools, it's a US military term. Give you an example: When the US administration invaded Iraq, they chose not to use US military and civilians who knew Arabic and had local knowledge about Iraq. This led to widespread failure. Only when the US military was allowed to reinstate some of the Arab experts and make policy decisions on the ground (instead of in Washington DC) was the US military able to turn around a debacle to some degree. The skills which go with situational awareness are local knowledge, culture and and understanding of local alliances. These skills can only come with strong cultural and linguistic skills. If you don't know Chinese and are not in China, well, forget it... This is why China can produce someone who has strong knowledge of business such as Shi Yuzhu, and he can build a gaming empire on the basis of one title: Zhengtu. I simply cannot imagine a non-Chinese having that degree of success in China. The biggest problem for non-Chinese is that without this local knowledge, they fall back on what they know and learned in the west. Instead of being an asset for their local companies, they are a drag on performance. If there is a single quality which makes for success failure in MMORPG playing it is “situational awareness”. This means being aware of who is on your team, the overall situation, then being able to move quickly to take advantage of rapid developments to move higher, to the next level.

It turns out that “situational awareness” is also the most important skill needed to win in the very dynamic Chinese business marketplace.

The interesting thing is that the term “situational awareness” does not come from B-schools, it’s a US military term. Give you an example: When the US administration invaded Iraq, they chose not to use US military and civilians who knew Arabic and had local knowledge about Iraq. This led to widespread failure. Only when the US military was allowed to reinstate some of the Arab experts and make policy decisions on the ground (instead of in Washington DC) was the US military able to turn around a debacle to some degree.

The skills which go with situational awareness are local knowledge, culture and and understanding of local alliances. These skills can only come with strong cultural and linguistic skills. If you don’t know Chinese and are not in China, well, forget it… This is why China can produce someone who has strong knowledge of business such as Shi Yuzhu, and he can build a gaming empire on the basis of one title: Zhengtu.

I simply cannot imagine a non-Chinese having that degree of success in China.

The biggest problem for non-Chinese is that without this local knowledge, they fall back on what they know and learned in the west. Instead of being an asset for their local companies, they are a drag on performance.

]]>