BEIJING, April 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent kicked off the UP2018 Conference, Tencent’s first Neo-Culture Creativity Eco-Conference, at the China National Convention Center in Beijing yesterday. Celebrating the passion behind quality content under the theme “With Love We Create”, the two-day conference gathered creators from around the world for in-depth forums. The latest strategies for each division of the Tencent Interactive Entertainment Group, including Games, Comics & Animations, Online Literature, Film, and E-sports, were announced, highlighted by the official announcement of a formal upgrade for Tencent’s Pan Entertainment Strategy as it expands the focus of its content under a new concept called Neo-Culture Creativity. Tencent released 4 experimental games at the conference, and is expecting to work with international partners to enhance cultural value in the IP industry.

Along with digitization trends in recent years, Tencent has seen rapid expansion in its content business and in the content market as a whole through its Pan Entertainment strategy, where it links creative content across a variety of platforms to engage viewers and content creators at unprecedented levels. At this current stage, Tencent plans to expand on this success by upgrading the scope of its content, shifting to a culture-focused lens referred to as Neo-Culture Creativity to the content and experiences that users can enjoy across Tencent’s platforms. “Neo-Culture Creativity is a more systematic kind of developmental thinking. It is about mutually promoting the cultural value and industrial value of content through a centralized connection of channels, so as to achieve higher efficiency for the creation of digital culture and the development of IP,” said Edward Cheng, Vice President of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Pictures.

Tencent has brought the Neo Culture Creativity concept to life with the release of four experimental games announced at the conference. The announced games include: Epistory – Typing Chronicles, a typing video game; Kerbal Space Program, a highly customizable space flight simulation video game; Tumor Doctors, a cancer treatment simulation mobile game; and Nishan Shaman, a Shaman culture themed game developed by Tencent. Nishan Shaman is still in development, and will be officially launched soon. Each of these games bring players closer to cultural or socially-focused themes, and enrich their knowledge as they play.

These four new experimental games are actually not the first time that Tencent has generated cultural value in the form of a game. Earlier in 2018, Tencent released games such as Joinery and The Fan, the aim of which were to promote and preserve cultural value with themes such as traditional Chinese culture, science and engineering. The games are available for download on Mobile QQ and through the WeChat Game Center.

These experimental games are just the beginning for the implementation of Tencent’s Neo-Culture Creativity concept. Anna Gao, Vice President of Tencent Games, noted that “these experimental games that Tencent released today are just a start. As we move into the Neo-Culture Creativity era, Tencent games vision is to connect more genres of games with cultural elements and give them more cultural connotations, which will allow us to explore more possibilities.” Aside from experimental games, Tencent is deepening its involvement in other fields of games through cooperation with leading cultural institutions. Tencent launched a cooperation between the Open Digital Library on Traditional Games (Tencent’s CSR project) and the National Library of China, leveraging each party’s resources to collect, digitally preserve, and disseminate information about traditional games across the country through Tencent’s technology and platforms. Tencent has also began cooperation with the Dunhuang Research Academy, where the partnership will combine modern games with cultural heritage sites to give young students a new way to explore history.

Tencent plans to spur development in the experimental games market through future cooperation with top international universities and research institutes by establishing platforms for mutual cooperation and the sharing of ideas. International collaboration was a main theme of UP2018, where 11 world-renowned creative minds held forums with their peers, most notably Greg Street, Design Director for League of Legends, and Brendan Greene, the lead designer and director of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, shared their ideas for the future of games as a part of culture, and how they see games as a way to inspire others to create. Other creators such as Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards, David S. Goyer, a premiere screenwriter from Hollywood, Andrew R. Jones, visual effects artist for Avatar, and Michael E. Uslan, producer of Batman films, were also in attendance, emphasizing the importance they see for Neo-Culture Creativity in the globalization of content, and providing insights on how to excavate industry value and cultural value for IPs.

“Only by linking together various partners, cultural resources and creative forms can we achieve a more efficient creation of digital culture around the world,” said Edward Cheng. Through the promotion of Neo-Culture Creativity, Tencent looks to strengthen cultural communication between countries around the world. 

About Tencent

Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Our social products Weixin and QQ link our users to a rich digital content catalogue including games, video, music and books. Our proprietary targeting technology helps advertisers reach out to hundreds of millions of consumers in China. Our infrastructure services including payment, security, cloud and artificial intelligence create differentiated offerings and support our partners’ business growth. Tencent invests heavily in people and innovation, enabling us to evolve with the Internet. Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 1998. Shares of Tencent (00700.HK) are traded on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

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SOURCE Tencent