News and Research on Perfect World Co., Ltd. (PWRD)
Business Description
Perfect World Co., Ltd. engages in the research, development, operation, and licensing of online games. The company primarily develops three-dimensional, or 3D, online games based on its proprietary Angelica 3D game engine and game development platform. Its principal operations and geographic markets are in the Peoples Republic of China.
Games
The company develops, operates, and distributes four 3D massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), Perfect World, Legend of Martial Arts, Perfect World II and Zhu Xian. All of its games are developed by using its Angelica 3D game engine and offer ‘anytime play,’ meaning users can play the games 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The company’s games also offer opportunities for social interaction in cyberspace. Life-like features in some of its games include marriages among online characters and martial arts apprenticeships. In addition, characters in its games may visually express feelings by their actions or by using emotive icons that appear with in a character’s dialogue box.
The company’s games also incorporate instant messaging systems and chat rooms, which allow players to communicate and interact with each other in real-time groups or in one-on-one discussions. The bulletin board in its games allows players to post notes or inquiries and respond to other players’ notes or inquires.
Perfect World: Perfect World is an adventure and fantasy game with traditional Chinese settings. Players can take on various roles, including swordsmen, magicians, archers, priests and magical creatures. Characters develop skills over time, use magical weapons and team up with other players to fight against monsters and various creatures and to conquer and govern territories.
Players can design and customize the appearance and characteristics of their characters and roles. This includes customization of skin color, facial features and expressions, body types and hair styles. The player can model the game character after her own image or the image of a star or create a new image. Perfect World also offers various features, such as day-and-night shifting and weather effects and changes. The game allows characters to fly and move in a continuous and changing terrain and environment without having to wait for scenery changes as is often the case in many other online games.
Perfect World offers 3D graphics that realistically represent real-life characters and items moving in captivating scenes. The game can be displayed on a 16:9 widescreen to provide a movie-like visual effect. The in-game online radio broadcasts live game commentary and enables players to select the background music. In addition to the fighting scenes and game play, and sense of adventure offered by the game, players can build virtual homelands, including creating mountains and rivers in the game environment. The company launched Perfect World in January 2006.
Legend of Martial Arts
The company developed Legend of Martial Arts based on a TV drama series with the same Chinese name. Legend of Martial Arts is an adventure story of Chinese swordsmen set in an ancient kingdom. It is designed to provide a light-hearted and game environment. The game attempts to capture the look and feel that has made the TV series a hit with the Chinese public. In addition to employing many of the customization features found in Perfect World, Legend of Martial Arts has contained several features designed to provide players a flavor of traditional oriental culture. These include an apprentice system, which is formed by martial arts masters according to Chinese legends, and a nick name/title system, which assigns interesting nick names and titles to players based on their respective game experience. The game also has added a marriage system, whereby game characters can get married to other game characters to add a sense of social reality to the experience.
The company also provides online auction services for players’ to trade their in-game items with other players. Players can purchase various fashionable and personalized virtual clothes, including traditional Chinese wedding dresses for characters’ in-game marriages. The game also provides a range of choices among virtual riding animals, such as horses, leopards, tigers, polar bears and dinosaurs. The company launched the Legend of Martial Arts game in September 2006.
Perfect World II
The company launched its third MMORPG, Perfect World II, in November 2006. The storyline of Perfect World II is set in a similar content and graphic background as Perfect World. Perfect World II also uses an item-based revenue model. The company also optimized the visual effects of its in-game items to enhance the attraction to players and transaction volumes. Perfect World II is licensed to overseas game operators.
Zhu Xian
The company launched Zhu Xian in late May 2007. Zhu Xian was developed based on an Internet novel with the same name. The basic story concept of Zhu Xian is a martial arts focused adventure set in a fantasy world. The game players are able to experience the various fantastic scenes and plots, such as martial arts training, use of magical weapons, upgrading of special capabilities and contests to obtain magical treasure, from the perspectives of the characters that they choose to play. The company also adds a time dimension, so that the player can enter into any game scenario based on the time parameter that they select without having to wait for the plot development like a novel reader.
Online Games under Development
The company is in the process of developing two additional 3D MMORPGs, including Chi Bi, and a casual game, Hot Dance Party. It is also developing a 3D online virtual community, Second World.
Chi Bi: Chi Bi is a war story developed based on the Chinese history over the ancient Three Kingdoms period. This game would be designed to include various in-game weapons and large-scale map of the game environment in a historical cultural setting.
Hot Dance Party: The company is in the process of developing Hot Dance Party, its first casual game. This game would allow players to enjoy dancing game play in a captivating 3D game environment with various background music choices.
Second World: The company is in the process of developing a 3D online virtual community to be named Second World. This virtual online community would comprise user-created characters and content, ranging from various styles of houses to shopping malls, cinemas, office buildings and fortresses, modeled after real-life items or created by players based on their own imagination. A user of Second World would be represented by his ‘avatar,’ a virtual identity expressed through a human-like image and used to interact with other avatars in a virtual environment.
Membership Management and Payment System
Perfect Pass is its integrated membership management system. It is designed to provide its customers with an integrated platform to log in, pay and purchase any products and services that the company offers. To play its online games, a customer must register an account with its Perfect Pass system. Once registered, the customer may log into its network, select and activate the desired games that the customer wishes to play, and then charge his account with prepaid game card or online points that enable the customer to play for a specified period of time or purchase in-game items. Each customer needs to maintain only one Perfect Pass account, which provides information regarding the customer’s available prepaid online points, profile and payment history of the last three months. As of March 31, 2007, the company had approximately 30 million registered accounts, including approximately 11 million active accounts.
Overseas Licensing
The company has licensed Perfect World II and Legend of Martial Arts to operators in 11 and seven countries and regions, respectively. Under license agreements, the company allows its overseas licensees to operate, promote, service and distribute its games in specified territories. The licensees are responsible for the sales and marketing of the company’s games in the specified territories, including setting the price of games and virtual items.
Competition
The company competes principally with the following groups of competitors: online game developers in China, including NetEase, Kingsoft and ZTGame; and online game operators in China, including Shanda and The9.
History
Perfect World Co., Ltd. was founded in 2004.
